Victus: The Fall of Barcelona

1

You! Yes, you! How dare you set foot in my home? I’ve just been reading what we’ve been writing until now.

What do you call this? What do you call it? You’ve transcribed everything I’ve been saying! Word for word!

That’s what I asked you to do? Well, yes, it was, but even you can surely understand that some things aren’t to be taken literally. When you tell a visitor to “make themselves at home,” do you really mean that? No! Naturally you do not!

When I began my tale, I assumed you’d sprinkle a little sugar about; I wanted a nice, straightforward book, like the ones Voltaire wrote, silly Candide, that whole thing. Well, not as puerile as that, perhaps, but properly laid out on the page, so people can read it, right up to the señoritas in their salons. And look at this! Do you not know what you’ve done? You, yes, you! You are to literature what Attila the Hun was to grass!

Així et surtin cucs pel nas, filla de. .!

What I’m about to say isn’t to do with my tale, but it’s important you all know: Waltraud has left me.

That’s right. Odd, wouldn’t you say? That deceitful, big-assed ninny of a cockroach, she mutinied two weeks ago, altogether unexpectedly. I’ve seen neither hide nor hair since. Well, not nothing: She put a note under the door the other day, containing some ridiculous allegations to justify deserting. That she was very sorry, all that rot. She was shameless enough to accuse me of acting improperly!

And you, reader, haven’t gotten the full picture of our relationship.

Don’t for a moment think she was working on this book out of the goodness of her heart — not at all! That was her excuse! Deep down, she thinks she’s the author. Like the sheepdog that grows so accustomed to biting the sheep, it begins to think it’s the shepherd. Although. . I don’t mind admitting there have been times when she altered the course of the story as it was getting a little out of hand. Now she thinks I won’t be able to carry on without her, that there’s no way for me to recount the bitter end of the siege of 1714. Well she’s wrong, very wrong! She wants me to get down on my knees and beg her to come back! Vanity! Women! Which idiot invented the second word when we already had the first? I’ll never ask that letter-sucking magpie back!

I, Martí Zuviría, Engineer, by the Grace of le Mystère, Bearer of Nine Points, Lieutenant Colonel under His Majesty Carlos III, engineer in the Army of America’s Rebel States, and in the Austrian Imperial Army, and in Prussia, the Turkish Empire, for the Tsar of Russia, the Creek, Oglala, and Ashanti Nations, Aide-de-Camp to the Maori King Aroaroataru, Comanche, Mystériste, expert in siege warfare, ducker and diver, frightened of swimming, et cetera, now, always, and in summary, human scum:

HEREBY CONFIRM, before God and such men as wish to heed my words, the following capitulations:

One: that my behavior toward Waltraud Spöring, since she entered my service and up until this day, has not always been entirely appropriate, especially in handling her efforts to tend to my poor health.

Two: that I beg her forgiveness, publicly and privately, humbly beseeching that she come and work (not too hard) for me again.

Three: that she has never asked to share in my literary glory, nor earthly vainglory, and that all her efforts with regard to this work are for the benefit of historical commemoration, for what it might be worth. (Less than nothing, by the way — but you are to leave this bit out.)

Four, a further and freely ceded capitulation: that Waltraud Spöring is not ugly but has an especial beauty. She is beautiful inside, and that’s what counts (in the eyes of God). (Very nice, though not even you would believe it.)

Happy now? Now that you’ve got your quill back, I imagine it makes no difference what I say, you’ll write whatever you feel like writing. This book is going to end up more disfigured than my face because of you! If you were honest, you’d include the fact that this has all been a horrible kind of extortion, a humiliation beyond compare.

No, I never insulted you! What did you expect? To be treated like a forest nymph? You’re more like a German forest bear, the only difference being that there’s no such thing as a bear with blond hair. .

Don’t leave! Wait, please, my best beloved vile Waltraud. Who am I going to talk to if you leave?

Sit. Pick up the quill, I beg of you.

Better, much better. Help yourself to a coffee with honey, if you like. Don’t forget I’ll be taking it out of your fee, though.

So then, July 25, 1713, finally, and the Bourbon army under the duke of Pópuli arrived outside Barcelona. The palisade soldiers, led by Zuvi Longlegs, went down into the bunkers. The good thing about captaining a retreat is the distance you can put between yourself and the enemy.

Predictably enough, Pópuli’s army was welcomed with a barrage from our cannons. In fact, when we palisade soldiers dropped back into the city, three cavalry squadrons galloped out past us. A skirmish with the Bourbon advance party took place, and the Catalan cavalry came away with a number of prisoners.

Pópuli took this defeat as badly as if he’d lost a regiment. In war, morale is everything, and when the cavalry rode back into the city, they received a hero’s welcome. The prisoners looked bewildered, as befits anyone who has just suffered a sudden defeat. They couldn’t believe they’d gone from conquerors to captives in such a short space of time.

“Planning to enter Barcelona, were you?” crowed the people lining the streets. “Well, here you are now!”

Pópuli’s full name was the not at all pompous Restaino Cantelmo Stuart, prince of Pettorano, gentleman at the court of Camara, and goodness knows how many other surnames and fluffy titles. Little Philip’s choice of general to defeat the “rebels” was very deliberate: Pópuli was even more pro-Philip than Philip himself, and he hated old Barcelona with a vengeance. Should the Allies choose to pull out, Pópuli would be only too happy to take charge of the occupation of Catalonia. And he quickly had a chance to show his affection for heinous acts of war.

Before reaching Barcelona, as his army had been advancing through Catalonia, upon taking control of a certain locality, Pópuli had two alleged pro-Austrians brought before him. “You two are going to play dice,” he said to them. “The winner gets to keep his life.”

An abuse, of course, but perfidious, outrageous, and arbitrary to boot. Also, he went on to pardon the loser: Acquaintances of the man claimed he was actually a Bourbon and had only feigned loyalty to Little Philip. (There’s something that now might seem laughable in this. For seasoned gamblers like the Barcelonans, honesty in the game was sacred. What really infuriated them wasn’t Pópuli’s tyrannical cruelty but that he hadn’t hanged the loser.) But this was only a small, if macabre, side story. His truly atrocious act was to hang every single prisoner taken after a skirmish near Torredembarra. Two hundred prisoners, that is.

In this, he followed Madrid’s logic. The ministers there, after the Allied withdrawal from Spain, said that anyone opposing Bourbon forces was to be considered a rebel and treated accordingly. The view from Barcelona was obviously quite different. With the foreign troops gone, the Generalitat had hurriedly formed an army, paid for out of its own coffers. So they had regulars at their disposal, uniformed and on the Catalan government’s payroll. The spiral of reprisal and counter-reprisal between Bourbon and Miquelet — we’ve covered that. But for Pópuli to do that to two hundred men at a stroke was beyond atrocious. Two hundred regulars hanged! Don Antonio sent a missive to Pópuli asking if he’d drunk away his senses. Pópuli answered by saying the same treatment would be meted out to any prisoners taken from that day hence. Don Antonio was especially offended that Pópuli addressed him as the “Rebel Chief.” Don Antonio, a career soldier, and the most respectful gentleman when it came to the courtesies and conventions in war! This time Don Antonio replied, very well, he was then obliged to accord the same treatment to any prisoner taken by his side.

The men hanged from the city walls, in sight of the enemy encampment, comprised his answer. A dismal sight if ever there was one: below, the sharpened stakes of the palisade; above, the hanged men.

This opening exchange was more than enough to warn Pópuli’s army to take precautions. The regiments installed themselves two thousand yards from the city walls, just out of range of the artillery. They immediately began building a cordon, an enormous circuit of parapets to surround the entire city, blocking it off between the River Llobregat to the south and the River Besòs to the north — the idea being to isolate the city until the engineers had planned their line of attack.

A military cordon, in and of itself, is no great secret. A hastily dug ditch, basically, along which barricades are thrown up with compacted earth, planks of wood, stones, sticks, and anything else the besiegers can lay their hands on. They put any unevenness in the land to their advantage, making extra obstacles out of hummocks or natural ditches. As far as possible, they create scaled-down versions of the five-sided bastions. Needless to say, the besiegers will flatten any buildings in the vicinity, no matter how small, for matériel.

The building of the cordon was under way when three messengers arrived bearing Pópuli’s surrender ultimatum. The mood in the city was such that these were more likely to be strung up than welcomed — a double guard, bayonets drawn, had to form to protect the men from the baying crowd.

That night Don Antonio called me in to see him. As soon as I came into his study, he addressed me: “I want you to go with the emissaries bearing the reply.”

“Me, Don Antonio?”

“You’re my aide-de-camp, if memory serves. And this is precisely the kind of occasion when aides-de-camp come into play. It isn’t only the city’s honor that’s at stake here but, since I am commander of the garrison, mine, too.”

“Certainly, Don Antonio.”

“I already know you’re not a soldier, just an engineer in uniform, and the most basic rudiments of militariness are quite beyond you. But do you think you could be so kind as to address me as ‘General’?”

“Yes, General.”

“I need to know you won’t be discourteous in any way with the enemy. Their army has just pitched, and in war, appearances are as important as in matters of the heart.”

“You’re right, Don Antonio.”

“They’re constantly labeling us seditious, countryless, kingless, and dishonorable. What better way of refuting such charges than to be courteous with them, with their troops looking on? You mustn’t let anyone spoil this. Graciousness, good deeds, gentlemanliness, gallantry, neatness. This is your task.”

“As you wish, Don Antonio.”

Honestly, it seemed like a waste of time to me. The Bourbons were in place, they were here for our blood; no amount of talking was going to change that. But that was the way with military honor in my time: a bloodbath with spotless manners.

A young Pelt was charged with taking the city’s answer to Pópuli. Evidently from a good family, he appeared proud to have been given the job, and had dressed in his best attire. He received me with a smile. “I’m told you’ll be acting as my second,” he said. “Do you know the protocol?”

“Well, no.”

“I go first. You stay to my right, a pace behind. After you, the Bourbon messenger, and bringing up the rear, two standard-bearers, one with the royal standard, the other with parliament’s. Be sure to adhere to the conventions.”

“As you wish.”

“We’ll bow to their officers — amicably but never submissively. Remember, we’re at war!”

He was the one, it seemed to me, who had forgotten we were at war.

“And when exactly,” I said, “does bowing go from being amicable to submissive?”

“Don’t worry about that. All you have to do is, once we get there, hand me the missive. I unroll it, and I read it out.” This little Pelt was indeed proud to be leading the delegation. “I haven’t slept all night,” he said, beaming. “I’ve been working on memorizing a few immortal words to add to the government’s missive. Today, sir, we shall make history.”

The location of the Bourbon encampment, just out of range of the city’s artillery, meant it was quite a walk to get there. For my part, I was deep in thought the whole way, and not altogether happy thoughts.

We halted very close to their front line. There were thousands of soldiers working away on their ditches and barricades, all the way from Montjuïc to the mouth of the River Besòs. As far as the eye could see, men were chest-deep and shifting shovelfuls of earth.

The dimensions of the ditch, the sight of so many thousands of men working so systematically, intelligently, to bring about our destruction, left me feeling stricken. I’d been on the other side in Tortosa, so I hadn’t comprehended how distressing this all was from the point of view of the besieged.

A few minutes later, a podgy colonel came out to meet us, with four officers alongside. Coming a little way past the half-finished trench, this colonel addressed us brusquely: “You took your time.”

All the buggering about preparing for ceremony, and the Bourbons didn’t even bother to greet us.

“The reason for our lateness,” I said, stepping to the front, “is explained in the first paragraph. Here, read it for yourself.” I handed over the missive, somehow forgetting the protocol, and the Pelt’s immortal words.

The colonel, seeing that it was written in Catalan, thrust it back into my hands. “Tell us what it says in Castilian!”

The colonel and the men he had with him seemed cast from the same mold: dark eyes, pompous-looking mustaches, and a studied haughtiness to them all. I took a breath. There are a thousand ways to offend one’s enemy — now that I was going to have to read, I chose to do it in a chirpy tone, enunciating slowly as though reading to the village idiot — as if I doubted his ability to comprehend the civic composure of the people of Barcelona.

The enemy’s letter, delivered to this City by a messenger, required such attention that we considered it proper not to reply immediately.

I looked up from the sheet of paper. “Shall I go on?” I said. “Or do you already have an idea of what comes next?”

“Read on!”

I felt like I was breathing fire. This fat little colonel was really getting on my nerves with his self-important tone; I wasn’t there to take orders from him. I hesitated: to read or not to read? That was the question. I resolved to follow Don Antonio’s orders.

I filled my lungs so that the thousands of white uniformed soldiers digging the trenches would hear. Curious to know what was happening, they’d put down their picks and shovels to watch the scene. They viewed me thoughtfully, without any animosity. Their officers were so absorbed that they gave no order to go back to work. “Read it,” I said to myself, “like Jimmy announcing his own arrival at the gates of heaven.” I summoned my most stentorian voice:

This City will resist the enemy at its gates.

This City, and the whole Principality, innately loyal to its sovereign — whose charge it would be to declare peace — remains at war.

The unjust and extraordinary threats against us are not daunting, but rather give great heart to the vassals upholding their oft-stated oaths of allegiance.

And because this City is not accustomed to changing the terms of civility, it returns the messengers as safely as it received them. In view of this reply, the Duke of Pópuli should proceed as he judges best, for the City is resolved to oppose all invaders, as he is about to learn.

Barcelona, 29th July 1713

A long moment passed — longer than their execrable cordon — with the Army of the Two Crowns standing looking at us, as though le Mystère had turned us to stone. I lowered the paper brusquely, and only then did the greasy colonel turn indignant, or at least made a show of indignancy.

“What kind of farce do you call this?” he cried. “Do you know you are welcoming a siege?”

“What does it look like?” I said, rolling my eyes. “Think we’ve got cannons up on our bastions just to welcome you in with flowers?”

“Such folly can only be that of criminals who know they are guilty and are afraid of royal punishment.”

“Sir!” I said. “Show some respect.”

“Your ramparts are far from fit for war, and His Majesty’s army has forty thousand hardened soldiers!”

I raised my balled fists above my head. “And we have fifty thousand! Each and every city dweller, plus all the unfortunates who have fled to us seeking refuge!”

“Zuviría, please!” interrupted the Pelt, the first time he’d spoken.

But that colonel had succeeded in irking me, and I let him have it: “And for you to call us criminals! When we occupied Madrid in 1710, the worst we did was to hand out a few bags of coins. And you thank us by setting fire to villages and cities, hanging women and old people, and now setting camp before our walls, ready to scorch us with thousands of pounds of gunpowder.”

“No one raises his voice to me, least of all a rebel to the king!” roared the colonel. “The only thing stopping me from teaching you a lesson is the hospitality required by the rules of war! It’s not too late for you to come to your senses. Do you really think you can resist the most noble duke of Pópuli? He has already covered himself in immortal battlefield glory and is a descendent of the most august Neapolitan families.”

A Neapolitan! Now, there was a way of pacifying me! Their commander in chief, Pópuli, Neapolitan! See how they get absolutely everywhere?

“Neapolitan, did you say?” Making a show of moderation before I exploded.

“From Naples, yes, and of its most distinguished stock.”

But before he could finish, I bellowed like a hippopotamus. “Know the real reason why your little Italian general hasn’t attacked yet? Because he’s scared stiff! His rectum is clenched so tight, a beetle’s antennae couldn’t fit up there!”

“Please, Lieutenant Colonel!” cried the scandalized Pelt, who had turned green and white, rather like a chard.

“We’re going to give Pópuli such a kicking that he’ll go flying, all the way over the Mediterranean and back to his Italian boot!” Then, turning to the officers alongside the corpulent colonel, I said: “As for you, come any closer and we’ll riddle your bodies so full of holes, you’ll end up more like cream sieves, you bunch of blockheads!”

It goes without saying that there ended the courtesies. The Pelt was so dismayed that he didn’t say a word during our walk back to the city. For my part, when Villarroel asked how it had gone, I merely replied: “Mission accomplished, Don Antonio.”

2

So began the long, cruel, and singular siege of the city of Barcelona. Within a few days, the Bourbons had closed their cordon, just about, from one side of the city to the other. Following that, they were so occupied in applying the finishing touches that they didn’t bother to begin firing at us.

The mood inside the city fluctuated more than the London Stock Exchange; very quickly, the Barcelonans shifted out of euphoria and into the monotony of a never-ending standoff. Neither did the city consider surrender, nor did Pópuli attack. There were some routine artillery exchanges between the cannons on the bastion tops and the besiegers, more colorful than dangerous, the occasional cavalry sortie into no-man’s-land, and some desertions from either side. Strange as it may seem, more soldiers flowed in the direction of the city than fled it. The Spaniards tended to desert more regularly than the French, doubtless because they were given worse food. The defectors usually exaggerated the hardships they’d undergone — to win our sympathy — but we could see that the soles of their boots had rotted, and that spoke volumes.

Things were increasingly strained between the French and Spanish. The French accused their allies of being good for nothing, incapable of looking after their own allies in a siege. The Spaniards retorted by pointing out that the French navy was as good as pointless. (And right they were; the naval blockade was a constant source of embarrassment for the French, at least until Jimmy arrived.)

As an engineer, I couldn’t have been happier with the way the siege was going. Let me remind you that when a city was besieged selon les règles, even if everything went as well as it could for the attackers, they still had only thirty days. All an engineer in my position wanted, therefore, was to draw things out. What the government chose to do with that time wasn’t my concern: negotiate a respectable peace, bring in foreign reinforcements, or wait for other world powers to intercede with diplomacy. Any of these. If Barcelona’s cries were heard in the rest of Europe, sooner or later, someone would have to do something. Thus I reasoned, vaguely. Everyone did. Meanwhile, the months passed, and Pópuli never embarked on his Attack Trench, and so to us, every new dawn was like a victory.

A curious drôle de guerre, yes. Consider it: Most of us soldiers did a shift on the ramparts or in a bastion and would then go home for dinner or breakfast, often a stone’s throw from our battle post. I myself, within five minutes of being up on a bastion observing the Bourbons with the telescope, or directing defense works, would be back at my table with Anfán on my lap and Amelis putting a plate in front of me. “How was your day, darling?” “Great, sweetie, they sent out a patrol, and we dropped our breeches and showed them our bare behinds.”

People would go down to the seafront parade for aperitifs. Sometimes becoming the audience for exciting skirmishes between the two navies, our own ships sailing out into the bay to slip past the blockading French ships, who could do little to stop them. The crowds cheered and clapped, as though it were some kind of stage play on water going on, and not a siege.

News and provisions came into the city by boat. From what we could piece together, it sounded as though, outside the city, far bloodier fighting was taking place. The Red Pelts were also keen to hear any and all news — some of the boats bore Archduke Charles’s letters from Vienna. I believe I’ve already made mention of that swine having sold us out, but in his royal little letters, his message was always: Well done, my boys, keep it up, keep on smiling at your executioner.

Between the city and the enemy line, there were a few workers’ cottages, inns, and in the lanes near the city, brothels. Through the course of the siege, these gradually fell to pieces and were destroyed. By the artillery and, mainly, because both sides sent crews of foragers to bring back tiles, bricks and slabs. They needed anything they could lay their hands on to reinforce the cordon, and we, to bulk up the ramparts.

Usually, a patrol, one of ours or one of theirs, would occupy an abandoned building midway between us and the enemy. They’d dismantle anything of interest as quietly as they could and then, when the sun went down, return to their own side, arms or sacks full of whatever they’d plundered. If possible, we’d keep out of sight by making our way back along a dry riverbed or a disused irrigation channel. Logically enough, skirmishes were commonplace. Truth be told, they usually happened suddenly and confusedly more than out of any great desire to fight.

Pillaging is generally associated with an outbreak of savage brutality when, really, methodically taking apart a building is one of the most tedious tasks known to man — particularly, say, when you’re charged with leading a certain Ballester and his men in the operation. (This fell to me, of course; other officers declined such a great honor.) To begin with, rather than keeping their heads down, the Miquelets tried to provoke the enemy. They couldn’t, or didn’t want to, understand that we’d gone to that abandoned farmhouse, or that stable, to gather matériel for our side, and to keep it out of Bourbon hands. I became incensed, seeing them wasting time — pulling women’s clothing out of trunks and japing around in it. And instead of staying silent, it would be a noisy jamboree, with petticoats for scarves. Good old Zuvi — he was like a hen trying to order a dozen wolves about. And more often than not, they simply found my orders incomprehensible.

“The frames! Pull the window frames out!”

“Why the cojones do you want us to take wooden window frames with us?”

“Do as you’re told!”

“You engineers have very strange ideas when it comes to war.”

We’d fall back, and always, always, one or two of them would have a petticoat draped around his neck. With six or seven large window frames weighing them down, they’d run along at a stoop.

I brought the scrapping schedule forward. To try and get in before the Bourbon crews, and because if we went out later in the day, the Miquelets were sure to be drunk. Not that I could stop them from coming back drunk; in the early days of the siege in particular, wine and liquor were still being found in abandoned larders.

I was sometimes less harsh with them when they seemed downcast. Those rooms, now empty, had been occupied not long before by people like them. Or at least the people they’d been before joining the Miquelets. Their thoughts were plain: If we’re here to defend a city, what are we doing destroying its houses, outside the walls though they may be?

It fell to me to teach them a few things. “Your life is no longer your own! It belongs to the city now, and it is for the city to decide what you do and when you shall give your life. As long as the siege lasts, we cease to exist as individuals. Accept it!”

Ballester would come back with some retort, and we’d have an altercation. A very isocratic form of command, of course, though that didn’t make it any less tiring. I felt snared — Ballester closing on me from below and Don Antonio from above.

I finally understood the usefulness of all those hours in the Spherical Room. It was akin to living inside it, to serve under a commander like Don Antonio; oversights were not tolerated. When would the fortification works be complete on this part of the ramparts? Why that blunt angle on the Saint Père bastion? What’s that gap in the stockades doing there? How many bricks do we have in our provisions? My brain, along with every one of my muscles, was pushed to its limits. And this was even though the siege remained nothing but a series of small skirmishes.

Don Antonio would usually have a cohort of officers and assistants around him. But one chilly morning, he and I bumped into each other, just the two of us, up on the ramparts. Wrapped in a bedewed cape, looking out through a telescope, he resembled one more rock in our defenses.

“Don Antonio,” I said, breaking in on what he was doing. “Something’s been troubling me.” I took the fact that he didn’t shout at me as permission to speak. “You criticized me for not having what it takes,” I went on. “And yet you let me serve you.”

“Fiyé,” he said, still peering out through the telescope. “You had an education with the greatest engineer of our age, and I cannot do without such knowledge.”

“But I didn’t complete my studies. I didn’t pass the test.” I rolled up my sleeve. “See these tattoos. They tell my story — the fifth one, that I’m an imposter. There’s something I’m missing, Don Antonio, but I don’t know what it is. Perhaps you’re the person to tell me.”

Villarroel didn’t react. He continued scanning the enemy positions and said: “Let me ask you a question, my boy. If the entire Bourbon army were bearing down on your house, would you hold the last redoubt to the bitter end? Answer.”

“I would, sir,” I said, and not in the least enthusiastic tone of my life.

Notwithstanding, he replied: “We generals spend our whole lives hearing people saying ‘Yes, sir!’ And do you know what? The words I’ve just heard don’t fill me with great confidence.”

I said nothing. He lowered the telescope.

“Zuviría. Your learning is ample. In France, they taught you everything you need to know. What’s holding you back, what’s keeping you from what you’re looking for, is something else. A tremendously simple thing, in reality.”

Then a strange phenomenon took place. Something came over Don Antonio’s gaze, a sort of leniency or mildness, a look of compassion. Until that day I had seen such a look in the eyes of only two people, only two: Amelis and Ballester. And he said to me: “You haven’t suffered enough.” He paused for a moment, as if waiting for that something to quit his body, and when he spoke again, he was the great general once more. “I’m going to notify the general staff of something tomorrow, the start of a crucial, potentially decisive maneuver. All our hope, more or less, lies in this play. And you’re going to participate in operations. Perhaps you’ll be able to resolve the doubt that lingers in your soul. That is,” he said grimly, “if you survive.”

I was about to take my leave when he caught sight of my bare belt. “One other thing,” he said. “An officer without a sword isn’t an officer. Find yourself one.”

The quartermaster was so tight, he wanted me to pay six pesos for a sword. I flat refused. That same night, while Peret was sleeping, I stole his. It had so many chips and nicks in it, it was more like a saw than a sword, which didn’t bother me, as it would be sheathed most of the time. Peret was deeply upset and badgered me all the way through the siege to give it back. I pretended not to hear. “Six pesos!” I said.

Don Antonio’s maneuver consisted of sending out some ships, well stocked and carrying a little more than a thousand men and companion cavalry, and disembarking behind the enemy’s rearguard. Their mission would then be to raise recruits throughout the land and, when the numbers were sufficient, to come in and attack the far side of the Bourbon cordon. This, coordinated with a charge by the Coronela, would pincer Pópuli.

Bazoches had taught me about all the possible ways out for a garrison under siege, and this must have been among the most audacious, imaginative, and well planned I’d come across. Or it would have been, if there did not exist on this earth a race of pernicious, gluttonous dilettantes known as the Red Pelts!

Waltraud beseeches me to calm down, to carry on, but I don’t want to calm down, I don’t have the slightest interest in calming down. For the French and Spanish — they had to be killed mercilessly — they were the enemy. But the Red Pelts, those lordlings with their powdered cheeks, turned everything we were fighting for into an empty husk. Deep down, they didn’t believe in Catalan liberties, or in our constitutions. In the end, they were faced with an enemy who sought to exterminate their people, something so unprecedented and ferocious that they did carry on fighting, but only because there was no choice. Out of earshot, their motto was: “Chaos before slavery.” I’ll describe everything that happened! How they hindered General Villarroel, how they managed to make defeat out of our victories. For until now, only the victor’s version has been told, or that of the complicit Catalan upper class: empty lies, the lot. And as everyone knows, an empty cup makes more noise than a full one.

Schnapps, bring me more schnapps. May the harshness of it strip our throats but never quench our hearts! Chin up, Martí!

Back to the story. Where were we? Ah, yes. The expedition.

The government wanted it led by the deputy of the military estate, the very noble, and also profoundly Pelt-y, Antoni Berenguer. Not the ideal man for such a complex and risky venture: In spite of his title, he was a politician, not a soldier, and he was also very old. He was confined to a wheelchair, complete with a chamber pot attached underneath. His lower eyelids hung down like wet bloody tongues. Yes, credit where it’s due, his white eyebrows and beard, cut by one of the city’s finest barbers, did confer upon him an air of venerability.

Deputy Berenguer had a retinue of upstanding citizens to underline the solemnity of his post. They were nothing more than a crew of bootlickers, and very quickly, our name for them—“Berenguer’s oafs”—stuck. There was no point to them unless they were with the deputy; away from him, they were nothing but a herd dressed in silk.

I wasn’t sure about Berenguer from the start. True, as deputy of the military estate, he was the institutional incarnation of the spirit of the struggle. He, and only he, had the sacred right to bear the silver mace symbolizing the Catalans’ right to oppose any invader. This was a large silver truncheon with baroque inlay, affectionately referred to by the people as “The Club.” Any neighborhood the deputy passed through with this in hand, all the local inhabitants over the age of sixteen were obliged to drop what they were doing, to leave their lives behind, and to give everything in defense of their country. But, so my thinking went, was it really necessary to put this sanctimonious old fart aboard a ship? And that isn’t a metaphor, by the way; his guts really were in poor order.

As for Colonel Sebastià Dalmau, who was also part of the expedition, words cannot describe the talents of that giant of a man. Of all the anonymous heroes of this century, Dalmau was one of the greatest.

He descended from one of Barcelona’s grandest families. When the Allies withdrew from Catalonia, he immediately came in on the Generalitat’s side. In fact, he was one of the few in the upper classes who responded to the Crida. His whole fortune went to underwriting the Catalan War, every last peso. The Sebastià Regiment was financed entirely by his family; the soldiers’ wages, weapons, provisions, and uniforms all came out of his pocket. The infantry on the expedition was to be formed of this regiment, which consisted of non-nobles and non-guild members. Tavern and brothel dwellers, scum — the government trusted them less than they would a converted Jew. From my point of view as an engineer, I didn’t judge them on where they came from or their prestige but on their military effectiveness, and in that respect, they struck me as an altogether magnificent unit. The Red Pelts worked by a different logic and were relieved to see the back of Dalmau’s troop. (Why risk decent young men when the dregs were offering themselves up?)

Some men are born to be happy, just as others might be born lame or with blue eyes. Dalmau had one of those smiling “all will be well” countenances, and coming from him, it seemed like certainty rather than wishful thinking. He had a very Barcelonan way of looking at things. War, to him, was at root a transaction, with one’s homeland as a business and one’s family as shareholders. Properly considered, in a civilian army, he was the ideal kind of commander.

As for the other officials who boarded ships on that expedition, we need mention only one other, a German colonel. And the less said about him, the better. In siege situations, dark things happen.

This colonel was one of the few, the very few, who chose to come over and serve the Generalitat when the Allies withdrew. But he wasn’t motivated by any noble cause. Various common crimes — including looting from dead bodies — meant his reputation preceded him. Word had it, he’d led a troop who had stripped dead soldiers of their possessions before burying them en masse.

His position in the Allied army had therefore become untenable, and when the Crida went out, he defected, claiming that the Catalan cause was close to his heart. For the Generalitat’s part, it was short of officers and admitted him without asking questions. Even so, he was such a scoundrel that the German volunteers in Barcelona refused to serve under him. Don Antonio set out for him, in no uncertain terms, his choices: Either he could restore his reputation when the bloodiest fighting came, or pack his bags for Vienna, where the hangman would be waiting. He had no choice but to join the expedition.

His favorite word was Scheisse. He said it so often, the men ended up calling him Scheissez. Just so you know, my dear vile Waltraud, in Spanish surnames, the ending — ez means “son of.” Perez, son of Pere; Fernandez, son of Fernando, et cetera. What the Barcelonans didn’t know was that Scheisse means “shit” in German. So every time they addressed him, they were calling their superior officer “Shitson.” Shitson himself wasn’t amused, but since Don Antonio had made it clear he wouldn’t tolerate the man abusing his authority, he had to grin and bear it. He was always looking at you out of the corner of his eye. During the voyage, we were constantly glancing at each other. He was like any of the other rats on board, the one difference being that rats are the first to abandon a sinking ship, whereas Shitson was looking for a way off as soon as possible, whether the vessel was seaworthy or not.

For my part, I couldn’t seem to shake that look Don Antonio had given me just before the order to join the expedition. Now the outcome of the war depended on the thousand men sailing with me. Perhaps I was on my way to learning the definitive lesson. That of The Word.

Ballester and his crew of ten were also with us. They’d be sure to come in handy as scouts. As for the French flotilla blocking our exit, that was the least of our worries. Our ships were dodgers, built to hug the shore; theirs had deep hulls and could never get anywhere near the coast. The journey to Arenys wouldn’t take long, not over six hours if the winds were favorable, and we wanted to be swift so we could travel under cover of dark. As for the embarkation, I’ll save the details: forty-seven ships of all different sizes, a thousand infantry, and several cavalry squadrons boarding them. The voyage I’ll skip as well — owing to my rank, I spent the duration alongside Berenguer, his farts, and his oafs.

As with the voyage, disembarking was a tedious affair. There weren’t many barges to transfer the troop to dry land, and since the bay at Arenys was shallow, the majority of the men jumped over the sides and waded to shore, powder and rifles above their heads. The horses were simply thrown into the water; instinct sent them inland. I was one of the first to get down after Ballester and his men. It wasn’t bravery but, rather, that I couldn’t stand being on the ship a second longer. When I set foot on dry land, I felt like someone had replaced my head with a whirligig. The sea! Here’s a question: What’s big and useless like the sea? Only one thing: my dear vile Waltraud! Ha! Oh! Not laughing?

To make things that bit more complicated, the people of Arenys welcomed us as though we were liberating them. Lovely, but if you want to create a huge amount of confusion, mix together a soaking-wet regiment, barges with men and equipment being off-loaded, horses running up and down the shore, officers raw-voiced from shouting, and then add in hundreds of old people, women, and children running and hugging a thousand dizzy soldiers. Great care was required with Deputy Berenguer; carrying his wheelchair to dry ground provided quite a spectacle. Since no adequate barge could be found for the grand so-and-so, someone came up with the brilliant idea of carrying him instead, the porters wading waist-deep with him on their shoulders. First the wheelchair was handed down to them, then the deputy. What they hadn’t accounted for was how heavy the flatulent general was. He settled into the chair and the poor porters sank up to their necks. A little more and they’d have gone under. Berenguer, though, was very happy, going along the surface of the water like Jesus of Nazareth in a wheelchair.

Almost recovered from the seasickness, I walked up to the top of a dune from which the whole beach could be seen. I caught sight of Ballester, his men around him on the rocks having breakfast, him standing looking pensively out at the sea, his horse’s reins in one hand. For mountain folk, the sea will always be a mystery that stirs them. It was going to be a good while longer until everyone had disembarked, and I went over for a chat.

“Tedious. Shall we head out? A race?” I said, challenging him. “Bet you anything you like I can get to Mataró before you.”

Mataró was under enemy occupation. It was as though I were daring him to a harebrained race to a cliff edge — whoever stops, loses. He snorted contemptuously. “The army up to its neck in water,” he said, still looking out, “and you talking about horse racing.”

It was precisely his gruffness that made him so much fun to needle.

“You’re just afraid to lose!” I said. “I bet a peso.”

He abruptly turned to face me, the blue vein on his forehead standing out.

“You have to obey my orders, remember?” I added. “Well then — mount up!”

And up we got. In no time at all, we were galloping at breakneck speed. I know, it was sheer stupidity, as well as an affront to all common sense. But know something, my dear vile Waltraud? We were only young.

We entered a pine forest on a narrow path. His horse was black, mine a dun white. They were neck and neck for a good long while. Every so often I turned my head and stuck out my tongue. This enraged Ballester — sense of humor not being his strongest suit — and he spurred his horse to go faster. I don’t know what happened with mine — perhaps it saw a snake, perhaps a hoof struck a pine root — but it pulled up suddenly, and I went sailing forward over its back. Luckily, it had rained recently, and the muddy ground cushioned my landing.

I got up, assessing the surrounding greenery with all my sharpened senses. It struck me how foolhardy we’d been. We’d gone a good way south, and it couldn’t have been over two or three miles from Arenys to Mataró. There was no way the Bourbons wouldn’t have garrisoned a place like Mataró, so near to Barcelona.

“Strange,” I said. “Nobody about. No checkpoints on the road, no horseback patrols. Not a soul.”

“We’ve stolen a march on them,” said Ballester, whose ears had pricked up as well now. “They weren’t expecting us to disembark behind their rearguard.”

I mounted up again and rode a little farther on. Not a trace of human life. Only the thick and deathly silent forest on either side of the path. We came to a steeply rising bend. “Look!” I cried.

Startled, Ballester put his hand to the hilt of his sword. But I meant only the butterflies — hundreds of orange butterflies were swarming around in a clearing to the left of the bend in the path. Dismounting, I walked forward into that cloud of orange wings.

Thoughts of Bazoches came into my head, memories of the Ducroix brothers’ rational magic. No, I felt no desire to harm those butterflies. Quite the opposite. The world was at war, it was a time when everything was close to tumbling into the abyss, and submerging myself in those fluttering wings felt cleansing to the spirit. They understood; they came and landed on me. Dozens and dozens alighting on my outstretched arm, covering the sleeve of my uniform like a resplendent wreath.

“Thinking of eating them?” said a laughing Ballester from up on his horse.

“Don’t be barbaric! They’re resting on my hand precisely because they know I won’t do them any harm. Listen: When a person observes a scene with all his attention, he becomes a part of that scene. Plus, insects love new things.”

“Mother of God,” groaned Ballester, his hands on his saddle pommel. “We’re the expedition scouts, and here you are, wasting time trying to tame winged maggots.”

“Come on, dismount,” I said. “Come on, man, get over here. I’ll show you a trick.”

He rode on a little way to check that there was nobody beyond the bend. Then he came back and dismounted.

“Hold out your arm,” I said, showing him. He looked at me, unconvinced. “Come on! What’s the problem? Ballester the Brave, happy to take on an army of Bourbons but afraid of a few butterflies?”

“It’s me who frightens insects. My men will tell you the same. We were sleeping out one warm night, and they all woke up crucified with bites, whereas I hadn’t been touched.”

Eventually, I got him to hold out an arm, palm up. For all the butterflies swirling around me, dozens and dozens of them, as Ballester had predicted, they gave him a wide berth.

“See?” he said, somewhat triumphantly lowering his arm again.

“It isn’t just a case of holding your arm out,” I said. “You need to offer them all of yourself. The hand has to be both messenger and message.”

He let out an annoyed snort. But instead of answering, he lifted his hand again, though in the manner of someone accepting a tiresome bet. To his obvious surprise, a butterfly flew toward him. Fluttering around a little, it came to rest on his rough and calloused hand.

Ballester’s face softened. He looked childlike for a few moments, regarding the butterfly that had landed on him; an unthinkable transformation. For once, here was a creature, albeit a maggot with wings, that didn’t fear him. We glanced at each other. And began laughing. I’m not sure why, but we laughed.

The spell was broken when we heard a faint noise, measured, like brass on brass. Ballester turned and looked toward the bend in the path. Half a dozen soldiers came into sight; the sound was that of their canteens clanking against buckles and straps. Their uniforms were white. The vein on Ballester’s forehead dilated once more.

They came to a halt — though they had been advancing with rifles at the ready, this was a surprise they hadn’t been ready for: two men standing in the forest, playing with butterflies. A long moment passed, Ballester standing there with his arm still outstretched. Then his butterfly flew away.

That was his signal: He launched himself at them with his sword drawn. The six of them had advanced two abreast, and Ballester aimed for the middle. He slashed at their necks, left and right, and all I remember is the animal cries — Ballester’s and those of the men as they fell. In the blink of an eye, six Frenchmen were down, either dead or wounded.

Gasping after that remarkable burst of energy, Ballester braced his arms against his knees. The look he gave me — was he begging forgiveness or arraigning me for frolicking with the butterflies? I was gasping, too, though in my case, it was from the shock.

Four more soldiers appeared on the path. They came at a pace and with their rifles up. They shouted something in French. They surely couldn’t believe what they were seeing: six of their colleagues dead and two men standing there.

“Drop your sword!” I said to Ballester.

He did so, but I already knew what was he was thinking: about freeing up both hands to draw his pistols. Better to be taken prisoner than die, I thought.

“Ballester!” I cried. “Don’t draw! Much as you want to, don’t do it!”

Everyone started shouting and screaming, everyone except Ballester. The French just about to pull their triggers, me saying we’d surrender. Ballester kept his arms across his torso, a hand on each of his pistol hilts. Ne tirez pas, nous nous rendons! A silly thing to point out, but one thing I remember is that all the butterflies were gone.

When I heard the shots, I threw myself to the ground and curled up in a ball, shielding my head. Three reports—crack crack crack—followed by three more, then another three.

But when I raised my head, I found that Ballester wasn’t dead, nor indeed was I; it was the four Frenchmen who had been shot down. From a bluff to our right, a dozen Miquelets were advancing, emerging from the thick woodland with the barrels of their rifles smoking.

And they were suspicious of us. “Who do you serve?” one asked.

“Emperor Charles,” I answered, on my knees and trembling. “And you?”

“Busquets. Hands up,” said the man who seemed to be their leader, pointing his rifle at me, “and keep them up. Elbows to ears.”

I did as he said, but I protested. “We’re with the army of the Generalitat!”

He only became more suspicious. A number of the others swung their rifles around in my direction. “You lie! And if you speak Catalan, that must make you a botiflero.”

As they waited to see what I’d do next, Ballester took the opportunity to finish off one of the dying Frenchmen next to him. A bullet through the nape of the neck — I remember it exiting through his mouth, as though he’d spat it.

Ballester’s relationship with death was something I could never get my head around, never. The Frenchman was certainly dying, nothing could have saved him, and I agree, the most humane thing was to end his suffering. But for Ballester, shooting a man was like tying his shoelaces. A trivial act, devoid of reflection or consequence. There I was, whey-faced, kneeling, arms to the heavens, whereas Ballester’s response was to take out his pistol.

“Take me to the man leading your unit,” he said to the Miquelet interrogating me. “He owes me twenty pesos.” Looking over at me, he said: “Busquets is terrible when it comes to dice.”

They led us to a clearing in the woods containing a group of men. There was something in the air, a tangible despondency, the leadenness that is the mark of a defeat. Those not injured and grumbling looked downcast, like scarecrows whose supports had been removed. It had begun drizzling.

Unlike Ballester’s men, hardened in a thousand battles, Busquets’s were civilians only recently incorporated to mountain life. They still had shoes on their feet, and not the rope-soled sandals; they didn’t have the usual blue hooded knee-length cloaks; and their weapons seemed cobbled together, kitchen knives and old muskets that made you think they must have grabbed whatever they could on the way out the door.

None of this was of the slightest interest to Ballester. He walked straight over to a man sprawled on his back against a saddle, with a blond beard and mane of hair. The gold earrings he wore suggested he must be the leader, the previously mentioned Busquets. He’d been shot in the left shoulder, and there was a man next to him delving into the hole with a pair of pincers. Not the easiest task, given that Busquets, in between slugs from a bottle of liquor, was squealing like a boar in a trap, spraying out mouthfuls of liquid when the pain became too much.

Recognizing Ballester, Busquets thrust the bottle in his direction. “You! What on earth are you doing here?”

Ballester held his hand out. “You owe me twenty pesos.”

Busquets looked baleful, fit to murder; Ballester just kept his hand outstretched. I feared the worst and glanced around at the rest of the men. But then Busquets burst out laughing, with his good hand grabbed hold of Ballester’s forearm, and called him “whoreson,” in a nice way. The surgeon, who had retracted the pincers, looked at me as if to say: Do these seem like adequate working conditions to you? Anyway, this was how it was with the Miquelets.

As for me, Busquets seemed skeptical. “Lieutenant Colonel? How wonderful.” He drank another slug and let out a howl at the surgeon. “Trying to treat me or finish me off?”

Not knowing how best to address him, I opted for the most formal and generic. “If you wouldn’t mind, Captain Busquets, could you tell us what’s been going on in the locality?”

Busquets didn’t seem to think I could be trusted. Tilting his head to one side, Ballester said: “I know he acts like one, but he isn’t actually a Red Pelt.”

Sighing, grumbling at the surgeon throughout, Busquets told us what had been going on. “We made an attack on Mataró. You know, all the botifleros in Catalonia have taken refuge there. And they force the town to feed and shelter them. Which helps us — more recruits. Those damned botifleros, so conceited, so insufferably arrogant. . They pitch families out of their houses or use the inhabitants as servants. They’re being served from silver platters while the people starve. Forced to cook for them, empty their pisspots.” He became angrier as he went on. “Who do they think they are? Taking over our houses, treating us like slaves, and — the cheek! — they accuse us of rebellion!”

The surgeon was still digging around, and Busquets let out another howl. “So,” he said when he’d recovered, “someone blabbed, or maybe it was just that they were sent some reinforcements, I’m not sure.” He took a breath. “Infantry came for us, but they had cavalry, too. We don’t do so well against cavalry. We were trounced.”

“When?” I said.

“Just yesterday.”

“They’ve had more patrols out,” said Ballester. “Trying to surround you.”

“I know. They don’t have enough troops to surround a forest as big as this, though. Plus, I’ve sent a company to their rearguard to monitor their movements. Now I’m just waiting for the last of my men to join up with us so we can get out of here.” Liquor all over his chin, he turned to the surgeon. “And for this sawbones to patch up the wounded!”

“Shut it,” said the surgeon. “You’re not making this any easier. Taking bullets out isn’t exactly what I was trained to do.”

“Isn’t that what surgeons do?” I said.

“Surgeon?” the man said back, matching the sarcasm of my tone, not stopping what he was doing. “I fled Mataró because I was afraid I might slip and cut some botiflero’s throat.” Looking over at me, he said: “I’m a barber.”

I took Ballester to one side. “Busquets hasn’t done anyone any favors,” I whispered. “If everyone was fighting their own little wars, there’s no way we’d win the main one. Do you see that now?”

“Busquets did well,” Ballester said. “This is his home, and he fought to protect it. What did you expect? For him to sit there waiting for us to show up? Until last week, not even we knew we were going to come to Mataró.”

Despite the distance between us, Busquets had overheard. “At least I tried, damn it. We gave it a go!” he shouted, leaning on his elbow against the saddle. “And now you show up, from God knows where, and start criticizing.”

I went over to him. “I have no issue with you killing Bourbons. But you’ve also been making it easy for them to kill patriots.” I gestured around us. “Look at your men, torn to shreds, holed up in the middle of some dreary forest. And Mataró still in Bourbon hands.” I crouched down so we could speak eye to eye. “These men will listen to you, Busquets. Order them to join the Army of the Generalitat.” I turned to Ballester to try to get him to help. “Say something, man.”

He held out his hand. “You owe me twenty pesos.”

“To hell with you,” shouted Busquets, his blond mane and long gold earrings shaking, “you and your twenty pesos! And you”—he pointed at me—“can leave off. The deputy! My men don’t trust the Red Pelts, to them they’re as good as botifleros. We’ve no grand strategies, all we want is to get the enemy out of our homes, and have a home again. No, we won’t go running around all of Catalonia, we won’t abandon our families.” He sighed bitterly. “And what kind of leader would I be who orders his men to do something they don’t want to?”

His invective was interrupted by one last howl. The barber had finally extracted the bullet. “For you,” he said, placing a bloody red ball in Busquets’ hand. Kissing it, Busquets then introduced it delicately into a small leather pouch. Lead against lead — that was the sound it made dropping in.

Ballester whispered in my ear: “Busquets collects all the bullets that enter his body. Saint Peter told him he’d only open his gates when the pouch was full.”

“And you,” said Busquets, addressing Ballester now, “I’d like to know what you think you’re doing running around doing the deputy’s bidding. He’s one of the worst Red Pelts around.”

Ballester’s look became more sarcastic still. “Twenty pesos,” he said.

Same old story. Put three Catalans in a room, and you’ll have four different opinions. Shaking my head, I said to Ballester: “This is pointless, let’s go.”

“Fine, go, then!” shouted Busquets, incensed, as we made our way out of the clearing. “I expected nothing more from Red Pelts! We’ll keep up the fight though! You hear? We’ll carry on fighting as long as one of us remains alive!”

I wafted my hand in the air, not turning around, as though bidding farewell to an incurable madman.

“And yet we’re supposed to follow you!” Busquets ranted. “Well, I’ll have you know: We’re going to liberate Mataró, and its storehouses, and its sixty thousand cuarteras of wheat!”

I stopped in my tracks as though I’d walked into an invisible wall. I strode back over to Busquets. “What did you say? Say it again? Sixty thousand cuarteras of wheat? Are you sure?”

“The storehouses are full to bursting. Mataró’s the natural place for the Bourbon army to keep their provisions. Very close to their cordon at Barcelona, and the patriots all fled from the town. No fear of sabotage.”

I stood staring ahead, my jaw on the ground. Sixty thousand cuarteras of wheat! The besieging army’s entire supply, a stone’s throw from where we were. The Two Crowns had no idea about the deputation having disembarked. Which explained their having placed only a few cavalry squadrons at Mataró, sufficient to keep a few flighty Miquelets at bay and nothing more.

“Captain Busquets!” I cried. “You are under orders from the deputy now, and you will obey them. Work with the army, and we’ll have taken Mataró in no time.”

Busquets screwed up his pained face even more. “But you yourself said a second ago that we would have to follow where you went, and that taking Mataró was a useless enterprise!”

Ballester and I led the horses away, crossing through the thick undergrowth, crestfallen. When we reached the path again, I couldn’t keep myself from hugging Ballester, who was taken aback by my enthusiasm. “We’re going to turn the siege of Barcelona into a latter-day Cannae!”

“What do you mean, ‘can I’?” he said, annoyed. “Explain yourself, damn it! I haven’t read as many books as you.”

“Think about all the prisoners and deserters who come over to our side. They all say the same: They’ve got no decent footwear, they’re eating insipid gruel day after day. Which is to be expected — the Bourbons have ravaged the country so badly, there’s nowhere to get supplies. They’re like the gluttonous fox after it’s eaten the whole chicken house.”

“And? You have no idea what hunger is. When push comes to shove, people will always resort to stealing.”

“That’s your view; you lead a small crew of mountain men. But at Barcelona, there are forty thousand mouths to feed, and they’re stuck there. We’ve got enough to feed them all right here: the foodstuff in Mataró. The Bourbons are doubtless thinking they can starve Barcelona into submission.”

“And what about can I?”

“Cannae was Imperial Rome’s worst defeat. Hannibal was facing a Roman army that had twice his number. When battle commenced, he let his frontline buckle back, drawing the Romans in, and, meanwhile, had his Carthaginian cavalry come down the wings and encircle the enemy. Our cavalry will be the wheat they’ve stolen. If we deprive them of wheat, and the deputation is situated at the Bourbon cordon’s rear, all will be lost for them. The besieger, besieged.”

There was a hint of a smile on Ballester’s face. He took my meaning. “Forty thousand men can’t survive for weeks and months on empty bellies. They’ll have no choice but to lift the siege.”

Before we mounted up again, I hugged Ballester. “Setting up a new siege will be totally impractical for them. Their morale will be rock-bottom; the military coffers in Madrid, empty. Europe’s sick of war. Little Philip will come under pressure from all different ministries to sign a pact with the Generalitat.”

We rode as hard as we could back to the deputation. They’d posted themselves inside an old country house. Deputy Berenguer, Dalmau, and the other staff officers were holding a council of war. Shitson was there as well, which meant we’d arrived just in time.

I was so excited, I could barely get my words out straight. Deputy Berenguer was annoyed. “This Busquets you speak of, he’s nothing but a petty tyrant! He has neither title nor uniform. We can’t be sure to whom he owes loyalty.”

“But Your Excellence,” I said, “the man’s wounded. I saw him with my own two eyes.”

“You’ve been fooled, then,” retorted Deputy Berenguer. “You just don’t have the brain to see it. How can we be sure his reports are accurate?”

“Because Busquets and his men are from Mataró,” said Ballester dryly.

Dalmau stood up and, with his usual congenial smile, made a proposal: “Leave them to me, Your Excellence. We lose nothing by moving out a little from our current position.”

We led the cavalry and the whole regiment to Busquets’s wood. When the Miquelets saw us, they erupted in sheer delight: a whole army come to rescue them! War, that great pendulum. A few hours earlier, Busquets was wounded and far from help in some forest, and now here was an army, well equipped and ready to go. Mataró would open its gates to us, the enemy storehouses would be ours, and, with a little luck, the final victory, too. Busquets’s Miquelets were over the moon. They embraced Dalmau’s men, weeping with pure joy. It was the first time I had felt at all optimistic during the war — and it would be the last. We didn’t need to win it; it was good enough not to lose.

At midafternoon I was called in to join the general staff. Members of the senior military were posted in the country house down near the beach where we’d landed. A debate was going on, a most heated one, between Deputy Berenguer and Dalmau. The former nestled in his pisspot throne, the latter with his fists thrust against the table, leaning forward.

“Our objective is to raise recruits and then go and liberate Barcelona!” bellowed Deputy Berenguer.

“Our objective is to win the war!” replied Dalmau from his side of the table. Seeing me come in, he said: “Ah, Zuviría. You, I believe, interrogated a couple of French prisoners whom Busquets was holding.”

“I did, Colonel.”

“And they corroborated the information on the storehouses?”

“In every respect, sir,” I said, not understanding the argument.

Dalmau turned to face Deputy Berenguer, his energies renewed. “Do you hear that? If you don’t trust Busquets, at least have faith in his enemies. Four and a half million kilos of wheat! Their whole foodstuff supply! We’re past harvest now, the land’s going to be producing nothing more; they’ll have no way of feeding their army! Plus, imagine what it’ll do for morale to take control of those stores. We can easily sail a portion into Barcelona as a trophy. Or better still: Transport all we can and share it out among the most needy! They’ll enlist in droves!”

Deputy Berenguer, though listening, was clearly annoyed. “And I say again,” he said, “the decision’s been made by our superiors, quite apart from the circumstances we’re faced with here. Obey orders! Your attitude is near insubordinate!”

I couldn’t help but get involved. “Your Excellence, may I ask what you mean by a decision made by our superiors?”

Dalmau had subsided into a chair, looking like he’d given up. He passed a tired hand over his face. “We’re not going to be attacking Mataró,” he said dispiritedly. “The deputy’s against it.”

I was astonished. “Mataró will open its gates to us!” I cried. “No blood need even be spilled! We lose nothing by attacking and gain everything. It might even mean the end of the war!”

“You will obey my orders, as I will obey those of my superiors,” said the deputy before I had finished. “I have instructions from the government not to enter Mataró. And that’s how it will be.”

I was speechless. This was beyond me. Our own deputy refusing to use force against the enemy. “Your Excellence,” I said, my mouth dry. “Your opinion may be down to the fact you’ve never seen our lads in action. They’d storm Paris and Madrid, given the order. Have faith in them, I beg you.”

“Come now, you don’t fool me,” he said with disdain. “I may be old, my legs may not work anymore, but my eyes still do.” Pointing at me, he addressed Dalmau once more. “The man who accompanied Lieutenant Colonel Zuviría before, was that not the infamous Ballester? Ballester! A country bandit, a prince among brigands! I myself sent out a decree to have him hunted down a couple of years ago, calling for him to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and his body displayed as an example.” He took a breath. “War indeed inverts and subverts the natural order of things. And you, Dalmau, know very well, better than anyone, that the men in your regiment are little different. The lowest of the low and, as such, prey to the basest urges.”

Dalmau protested. “My men fight like lions!”

“And I congratulate you on that,” said the deputy. “Your regiment has only recently been assembled, and they’ve very quickly shown themselves to be hardy. But Dalmau, tell me something: Have you ever given them an order not to use violence?”

“If you are referring to discipline, all the officers here will back me up in saying there have never been any issues.”

“In Barcelona!” specified the deputy, wagging a finger. “Under the watchful and paternal eye of the Generalitat. But once inside Mataró, can you guarantee that discipline will hold?” He turned and addressed me once more. “Lieutenant Colonel Zuviría, I hear you served as an engineer in His Majesty’s army in 1710?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell us, in that case: Is it reasonable to suppose of a place that has been turned into a general storehouse, and in which a huge quantity of grain has been gathered, that other goods and stuffs will also be gathered in that place?”

“Of course, Your Excellence,” I said, because it was true, and because this way there would be more arguments in favor of an attack. “Weaponry, munitions, material that can be used for sapping and for building trenches, certainly, and possibly carts and horses we’ll need to transport it all away—”

That old graybeard with his drooping eyes was both canny and astute, because before I could finish, he cut in. “What about wine? Cheap liquor?”

“Well—” I hesitated. “Possibly.”

He raised his voice. “Possibly? They’ll have food enough for an entire army and not a drop of filthy alcohol? Lieutenant Colonel! Before an attack, what do men use to calm their nerves?”

I gave in, to my great regret. “A little alcohol, doubtless.”

“Not a little, a lot!” he said scornfully. Taking a couple of breaths, he turned back to Dalmau. “The first thing your men will do is to get drunk. And once they’ve turned into a drunken mob, any discipline you’ve instilled will melt; nothing will hold them back. There are very many of the most noble families in Mataró, lineages going back to King Jaume I. Ill-advisedly, they’ve betrayed their country, but we can’t allow them to be massacred, least of all without any kind of a trial! We have here the ideal conditions for the lowest plebes to wreak the lowest vengeance: stabbing noblemen and taking advantage of ladies. Need I tell you what our enemies would do if they heard news of such an atrocity? Spread it around Europe, debasing Catalonia’s blessed name! We’re a small country; international consensus matters to us. No, sirs, I will not allow a minor victory to annihilate all our possibilities.”

I was so riled by all this that I myself took the floor. “Don Antonio would never approve such a decision! Quite the reverse.”

“Our commander in chief is at the government’s command, and my orders come from the government,” shouted the deputy. Like any Red Pelt, he was immediately incensed by any discussion about the Generalitat and Don Antonio’s competing influence. “It isn’t a military dictatorship!”

“Don Antonio, a dictator?” I said, becoming animated. “I’ve never heard such bilge in all my days!”

My tone forced Dalmau to intercede: “Lieutenant Colonel Zuviría! Act in a manner more befitting your rank — that’s an order!”

But I couldn’t control the frenzy taking hold of me. “If Don Antonio loved the saber regiment so much, he’d be fighting for the Bourbons; they offered him far higher wages than Vienna now pays him! And if our lads get their hands on a few botiflero petticoats, where’s the harm in that? That’s how it is in war, and these cowardly, self-serving so-and-so’s abandoned their people to join the butchers. What should we do with them? Pin medals on their chests? Extol their honorable virtues? We could exchange them for patriots! Take this many botifleros and we’d stop the execution of hundreds, thousands, of Miquelets!”

A number of the officers in the room wanted me arrested. When I put my hand to my sword hilt, Dalmau came and pushed me to the door. “Easy, Zuviría,” he said as he led me out. “You’ll achieve nothing, speaking to people like that.”

I still had time to shout over his shoulder: “What is this war, anyway? Let clockmakers make clocks and politicians politic — soldiers should be left to do what they do, make war!”

All there was for me to do then was sit at the foot of a tree with my head in my hands.

The pendulum of war, indeed. Lose, win, lose again. Everything changed within minutes, incomprehensibly, and on the basis of decisions that seemed divorced from the military. How were we to stand any chance of winning with this kind of people leading the way? They cared more about their own kind, even if they were botifleros, than their own soldiers.

Before I realized it, Ballester had come up and was standing next to me. “I’ve just come back from reconnaissance with my men,” he said. “Mataró is impossible to defend, and the garrison is a trifle. Should I report to someone with the details?”

I didn’t answer but kept my head buried in my hands. Ballester hit me on the shoulder. “Are the battalions ready?” he asked. “There are three entry points. I don’t even think we’ll need them; they’ll surrender as soon as we come into view.”

I could hardly look at him. “There isn’t going to be an attack,” I said. “Mataró isn’t going to be taken.”

An eternity seemed to pass before he spoke again: “But why not? Why not?”

It was one of the few times when I saw him become upset. I found this show of vulnerability unbearable; I felt responsible.

“Ballester,” I stuttered, “I’m sorry. You’re right about the Red Pelts. I shouldn’t have made you come.” I got to my feet, avoiding eye contact. “You should take your men and leave. Or join up with Busquets. Do what you like.”

He took me by the scruff of the neck and slammed me against the tree. “Who do you think you are? Who, damn it? You’ve as little right to eject me as you had to make me join up! Now tell me: Why no attack on Mataró?”

I didn’t even try to resist. In my confusion, I was as sincere as I could possibly be: “I don’t know why.”

Just then a couple of officers came by. “Ho! What’s happening here?”

“What’s happening,” said Ballester, letting go of me and beginning to walk away, “is that there are some people who have no idea what’s truly happening.”

3

There is perhaps only one thing sadder than watching fortune slip between your fingers, and that is to be moving away from it out of your own free choosing. It had been decided: The expedition would move on, no attempt would be made to take Mataró, and so we went on, like a treasure seeker who, having orders to bring back gold, discards a diamond as big as a rock. The cavalry went first, with the infantry bringing up the rear. A late-summer Mediterranean downpour began to fall.

The Miquelets under Busquets watched the army leave; despairing, grievous looks they gave us. Their silence was an accusation. I’d met them after a defeat — this was worse still. It was as though their souls had been extracted from their bodies. Even in victory, they’d suffered a defeat, and yet none could tell at whose hands.

The only one to raise his voice was Busquets. As the rain came down, he rode alongside the ranks of blue-uniformed soldiers.

“Why, why go?” he cried. “Victory’s right there!” He gestured in the direction of Matarós. “We only need to knock on the door, and the whole rotten building will come tumbling down!”

I have stored up a great array of memories in my life, and the image of Busquets then is one of the most pathetic. His arm in a sling, his long blond hair wet with rain, his useless entreaties.

Ballester and his nine Miquelets were in the column’s rearguard. They looked up at Busquets impassively, but I knew them, I knew that inside they were on fire. I spurred my horse over to where Ballester was. “If you want to leave,” I said, “do it now. It wouldn’t be good for the officers to catch wind of it. Legally, they could have you for desertion.”

He turned his head and spat by the feet of my horse. “You’re the deserters,” he retorted.

Busquets came over, bedraggled and weeping. “Ballester!” he said beggingly. “If we joined forces, maybe we could try it ourselves?”

Ballester just shook his head. “They’ll have been warned by now,” he said. “And they’ll be getting reinforcements soon enough.” Then he flashed a rare smile. “Anyway, what would be the point of staying here with you? You’ll be dead before you ever pay me back.”

“It’s for Saint Peter to decide how long we’re for this earth,” said Busquets. “And my bullet pouch is still only half empty.”

“Or half full,” said Ballester.

Busquets and his men made their way away from the column. I had no notion where they were headed. They didn’t even bid us farewell.

And what about me, why did I carry on under the orders of that insect Deputy Berenguer? I don’t very well know. Don Antonio had ordered me to go with him, and I found it unthinkable to disobey Don Antonio. I believe I may also have been moved by the impulse, latent in every person, to drink a bitter cup to the very last dregs.

It rained for the rest of that day.

Things went from bad to worse after Mataró. When Pópuli learned of the expedition, having recovered from the fright, he threw all he could at us. Thousands of Spanish and French were sent from their posts across Catalonia to seek us out and crush us. Pópuli went so far as to take a handful of battalions away from the cordon to join the hunt; he knew very well how dangerous a mass uprising would be to him. Sad to say, but our enemies had more faith in the Catalan peasantry than our own leaders did.

With such inferior numbers, the expedition soon became the fox trying to outrun the pack of hounds. We’d enter a town or village with trumpets blaring and the silver mace up front. Deputy Berenguer had given the order for us all to wear our finest attire, to make a stronger impression. To begin with, the order was obeyed. Then we ran out of changes of clothes. Soon enough we became unkempt, had no footwear, and our blue tunics were covered in mud and patches. In spite of everything, the marching band always had a full complement; its upbeat songs contrasted with our general aspect. Pu-rum pum pum! We’d come into a town square and the Crida would be read out, along with a little oration from Deputy Berenguer. And the following day, or the one after that, we’d have reports from our patrols that entire enemy regiments were approaching, and we’d have to take to our heels — Deputy Berenguer aloft, truly almost shitting himself.

Well, all this was more or less to be expected. (The Bourbon attempts to pin us down, I mean, not Deputy Berenguer’s flatulence.) Evading ambushes became our specialty; we traveled light and had a thousand eyes to inform us of the enemy’s positions. But the true disaster had already happened, and its name was Mataró.

Word of the Crida from Barcelona spread, along with news of the fiasco at Mataró. People aren’t stupid. With precedents like that, how could they trust the deputy? When he harangued them, his argument was based around three things. One, that Archduke Charles was a pious man, deeply, deeply pious. (As if it mattered in the slightest that a king, in some far-off place called Vienna, loved God.) Two, that they should trust in Our Lord God, for He would come to devout Catalonia’s aid. (If everything was in God’s hands, and if God was on our side, why had He stood by and watched the country’s current plight?) Three, so as not to scandalize the upstanding Christians in the crowd, he would keep quiet about the enemy’s iniquitous outrages. (No, man, no! That you want to shout from the rooftops! Let even the deaf know that we share their pain!) I remember Dalmau, during Deputy Berenguer’s speeches in the town squares, looking to the heavens and showing his opposition with the occasional snort.

One of the worst things was seeing how self-confirming Deputy Berenguer’s social prejudice was. All the zealous patriots had already joined groups of Miquelets like those of Busquets. Our presence was meant to encourage town councils to resist and govern in the name of the Generalitat, and to let the clergy know how treacherously their superiors had acted. But above all, we were hoping to win over the undecided majority: those who weren’t prepared to become outlaws but would happily oppose tyranny if it were done under the banner of a free and legitimate power. Deputy Berenguer’s speeches, full of as much hot air as his bowels, brought only excuses and tepid responses. Those who did join were the dregs of society — the dregs of the dregs. The usual layabouts, or folks so starved that they joined up simply for the meal. And thus Deputy Berenguer’s recruitment drive served to confirm his opinion about the lower classes. If any doubts remain as to what that man was like, here are a few more examples.

One day we found ourselves faced with several Castilian battalions. They were occupying a town we wanted to take, and when they came out to engage us in battle, once the firing had begun, a group of patriots inside the town scaled the bell tower and began firing at them from behind. Our men waved their tricorns to salute the men’s efforts, and our standard-bearers waved the flags joyfully. There are few sensations as exhilarating as finding kinship with complete strangers. This put the Castilians on the back foot; you could feel them vacillate for a moment, and that was the moment to sound a charge and sweep them aside. Instead of that, what we heard were the trumpets sounding the retreat.

Not believing what I was hearing, I pushed the soldiers nearest to me. “There must be some mistake,” I said. “Keep firing! Don’t stop!”

Shitson himself had to come riding over and gave me the order to fall back. “Didn’t you hear the retreat being sounded?” he howled at me from up on his horse. “We’re leaving! We’ve had word from the scouts that a full regiment is on its way to hem us in.”

“We’ve got them hemmed in!” I shouted, beside myself. “We could get to Portugal and back before that regiment arrives.”

Shitson had it in for me in particular because we were the same rank. I tried to make him feel less envious by saying it meant nothing, Don Antonio had promoted me only so my orders to do with engineering would be obeyed. It was pointless. All that happened was, as well as considering me a pen pusher, he also decided I was an imposter. He was obsessed with being promoted to colonel. That would happen only if a new regiment was formed, or if an existing colonel was killed, and that made any other lieutenant colonel a rival. Leaning out of his saddle, he prodded my nose with a finger. “You’ll never make a soldier, Zuviría. Your problem is you fail to see the bigger picture.”

The bigger picture! Let me tell you about the “bigger picture” of that day.

After we left, the Bourbons didn’t take the trouble to capture the snipers in the bell tower: They simply set fire to the church, and the men burned alive. The tactics they used against us were proof of the straightforwardness of the Bourbon approach. Any town that had taken us in would have its houses burned down, and one in ten inhabitants would be shot. Straightforward indeed.

Not long after that, the expedition forces divided into two. It was Dalmau’s suggestion, it being his view that there was no way for us to tackle such great numbers head-on; the best thing was to split the column. The main unit would stay under the deputy’s command. A secondary but well-stocked column would be under Dalmau, and a number of other, smaller units would go farther afield and try to raise troops.

Not a bad plan. If we split up, it would make it harder for the Bourbon patrols to track us, and in the first place, they’d be delayed trying to work out how many units we’d split into. They’d have to divide their forces, too. The large-scale war had become one of smaller encounters, so it was advantageous to try and reduce the numbers. Also, Pópuli’s terror tactics had other impacts. Once people knew their towns would go up in flames the day after we left, they became less willing to open their doors to us. By splintering, we’d move into a great many more towns, and not even the commanders of the Army of the Two Crowns would be brazen enough to burn down every single town and city in Catalonia.

That day I found out about the sheer sickening perversity that underlies all war. The deputy, emerging at one point from his musings, looked up and, with eyes full of hope, said: “Well, if that were to happen, at least the peasantry, stripped of menfolk and places to live, would join our side.”

The other men there seemed not to notice. Dalmau because he was concentrating on the maps on which he was explaining his plan, and Shitson because he was Shitson. But the words made a strong impression on me.

Politics are bad; war is evil. There’s only one thing worse than these two: a hybrid known as war policy. I’d been educated in a world where engineers were the hinges separating politics and war. A world based on the idea that politics merely shadow the armed forces: following behind, defining the outer edges. Coming into the new century, however, the noxious fumes of war took over the whole corpus. And here were the consequences: the overall thrust of our elevated mission being to protect citizens’ lives and homes. Turning the moral principle on its head, for Berenguer, the enemy burning and killing was no bad thing as people’s helplessness and feelings of revenge would play into our hands.

It goes without saying that Dalmau was extremely fed up with the deputy, his senile speeches, his constant gas from the other end, and this was another reason behind his proposal. Dalmau wanted to see what he could achieve on his own. I implored him to let me be in his column, but he refused.

“When we get back, Don Antonio will want an account of things,” he argued. “And without me around, the only reliable witness is you. Or do you think we should leave it to Shitson?”

The following weeks and months are a whirlwind of images in my memory, always the same, always changing. The Army of the Two Crowns hounding us. Us fleeing, attacking, counterattacking. March, countermarch, nights out in the open. Rain. Sun. Mud. Always on guard. Towns for us, towns against us, towns being put to the torch. The landscape there became a kind of cement in which past and present merged, as one’s senses were dulled by the sheer monotony of repeated cruel acts. We’d retrace our steps and find yesterday’s supportive town had become today’s ashy ruins. Mud. Sun. More rain. Sleet and hail, we’d make our way into ravines and hidden paths, later emerging in a forest. To our right, seven trees, each bearing three hanged men. Hadn’t we been there the day before? No, the day before it had been three trees, each bearing seven men. Change of direction; the scouts as our antennae, the column shuffling along like a thousand-legged insect. We were being defeated by a paradox: There was no way for us to recruit new troops because we were constantly fleeing, and we were constantly fleeing because of our inability to raise recruits.

Nor would I wish to suggest that it was the same everywhere, with each and every inhabitant prepared to make sacrifices for the constitution and Catalan liberties. Far from it! Many were the instances of betrayal, debility, and self-serving behavior. War also allows man’s most atavistic instincts to flourish.

I found myself at the vanguard of our unit one day, riding with the cavalry, when we came under fire from a hillside strewn with boulders. We could hear our assailants calling out encouragement to one another, and they were talking in Catalan. I thought it must have been one of these lamentably regular cases of mistaken identity you get in war. “It’s local militia,” I said to myself, “they’ve mistaken us for French or Castilian troops.” I gave the order to the other riders not to return fire, and moved forward, waving my hat to greet them. But the firing only intensified. As I moved closer on my horse, I could make out one of their men loading his rifle up on the top of a boulder.

“What the. . What are you doing?” I cried. “We’re with the Army of the Generalitat!”

To which the man said nothing. His elbow moved frantically as he thrust the ramrod up and down, and then I could see it in his eyes: He was just praying that my confusion would last long enough for him to have an easy shot at me.

When the Allied army disembarked at Barcelona in 1705, a great many municipalities declared themselves supporters of Charles. But it wasn’t unanimous. It wasn’t at all unusual for two neighboring towns to have opposing sympathies. Why? Because the priest had said God favored Little Philip? Not at all! They’d simply plump for whichever side their detested neighbors had not. Everyone must know stories about eternal disputes over rights to a well, or ownership of a windmill, anything. While Charles had been on the up, they’d kept quiet, said nothing. But now, with the Army of the Two Crowns occupying almost all of Catalonia, enthused, they took up arms and had no qualms about gutting one of their neighbors and using their political affiliation as an excuse.

As for the peasants shooting at us from the hillside, they couldn’t have cared less about constitutions, Austrian monarchs, Bourbons, and the like. The global war gave them a chance to institutionalize local conflicts. Europe’s apocalypse, to these people, became a story on which to hang the one thing they did ardently believe: that the next town along was a pack of whoresons. Catalonia’s freedom, the future of the land, the necessity of shrugging off the yoke of foreign tyrants, all was secondary to the noble calling of going and bashing in your neighbor’s head and, while you were at it, his son’s as well.

It’s as I say: War was the fire beneath the boiling pot, unleashing those atavistic fumes, pulling back that slight and insecure lid called civilization. Rousseau was right: Savagery isn’t without, it’s underneath; savagery isn’t to be found in far-off exotic places but in our own recondite depths. At the slightest excuse the savage in us will come storming to the fore, bowling down the civilized part like a cannonball.

Not that Voltaire ever understood, that insufferable dandy!

Deputy Berenguer was becoming less and less physically able. But his mental faculties were as good as ever: He could see that we hadn’t recruited very many men, certainly not enough to attack the Bourbon cordon with. But that didn’t stop him from sending letter after letter to Barcelona. Something about this made me sick. The Two Crowns army was closing in around us. To get through their net, we had to send some of our best riders — their loyalty had to be beyond question — and they’d be laying their lives on the line, trying to break through to the coast. Coordinating their arrival with that of a ship secretly sailed in from Barcelona made it triply dangerous. And what for? So Berenguer could send missives saying there was nothing to say.

An impasse had been reached, impossibly disheartening. The 1705 insurrection had begun in a place called Vic, a little over thirty miles north of Barcelona. We had to overcome many obstacles and make many detours to reach it. Quite the saga, for the Bourbons pursuing us were growing daily in number, and it took considerable maneuvering to get our unit to its destination intact. At least we were sure to have a warm welcome, given that Vic had been the first place to rise up in support of Charles. That’s what I thought then — I laugh to remember it!

They wanted nothing to do with us. Their elders urged us to turn around and leave the very same day, so as not to compromise them. “Bear in mind that, because we were the first to side with the emperor, we’re bound to receive the harshest punishments.”

The deputy, always indulgent with his own, went easy on them. Not me. “Given that they were the first to go on the attack,” I said, “that ought to make them the last to quit the defenses.”

Ordered to hold my tongue, I obeyed. It was pointless anyway. We still weren’t to know at that point, but it was the most futile of discussions. During the meeting, we later learned, Vic’s representatives had sent some namby-pamby local official, one Josep Pou, to ask for clemency from Little Philip’s army. Fabulous! The ones who had struck the match, accusing us of arson.

In the end, it became as though all our to-ing and fro-ing was merely to keep Deputy Berenguer from falling into Bourbon hands. Coordinating ourselves with the other columns — which were moving around as constantly as we were — and with Barcelona, too, was no easy task. A large number of our messengers never came back. Each time one galloped away, I found it hard to hold back the tears. If they were caught, they’d be tortured to death — itself a useless act, as the messages were written in a code that only Berenguer knew. The one thing he could be praised for, the clod.

It was a most ingenious code, with numbers standing in for letters or symbols. So, A was 11, M was 40, and E was 30. Other numbers stood in for whole things—70, for example, meant Barcelona; 100, bombs; 81, Philip V; 53, grenades; 54, Pópuli; and 87, Miquelets.

A rumor went around among the men that Deputy Berenguer kept the message hidden deep inside. The Bourbons would never decipher the code, because the numbers and letters were all nothing but a ruse. In fact, Deputy Berenguer would fart holding a cylinder to his behind. The implement didn’t, in reality, decipher written signs but, rather, the whistling sounds made when the cylinder’s top lifted.

Well, mob humor never has been that refined.

One day, early in the morning, the sentries sounded the alarm. Everyone scrabbled to arm himself, thinking it was a dawn attack by the Bourbons. No. To our relief, it turned out to be compatriots of ours — Ballester and his men, to be precise.

The sight of Ballester returning to us was one of the few happy ones during the whole expedition. I ran over and embraced him. I’m sure now that Ballester did appreciate my effusiveness, even though he couldn’t show it at the time. I put my arms around him; his stayed pinned to his sides. I didn’t mind. I could tell by his bewildered expression that he was having feelings he had no way to express.

Looking him in the eye, taking him by the shoulders, I said: “I knew you wouldn’t abandon us. I knew it.”

He pushed me away. “You were the ones who abandoned us. Don’t you remember?”

Looking around, I saw that only seven of his nine men were with him. “What about Jacint and Indaleci?” I asked.

“What do you think?”

We both fell silent for a moment. I was the next to speak. “And in spite of everything, you’ve come back?”

“It’s you who have come back,” he said, pointing behind him. The Miquelets had been scouting ahead of a far larger body of men: Dalmau’s whole troop. Plus three thousand men newly joined! Dalmau had recruited them himself, addressing the matter very differently to Deputy Berenguer. Not so strange, if you think about it. They were two poles: Deputy Berenguer’s apathetic moralizing and Dalmau’s levelheaded enthusiasm couldn’t have been more different. For Deputy Berenguer, the homeland meant the past, and protocols; for Dalmau, the future, and people’s rights.

A war council was held. Dalmau wanted to put forward some ideas he’d formed while expeditioning alone.

All told we could bring together five thousand men now. He wanted to proceed in line with the original plan: Attack the Bourbon cordon at Barcelona and raise the blockade. The disparity in numbers meant outright victory would be impossible. To start with, we were surrounded by thousands of Bourbons who had been deployed throughout the area. If they realized where we were marching, they would simply form a wall between us and Barcelona.

“But if we were to evade them,” suggested Dalmau, “we’d be in a position to attack the cordon’s right wing.” He spread a map out on the table. Everyone present came closer in.

“The Bourbons have divided the cordon into three sectors,” Dalmau explained. “The right wing is made up of Spanish troops, and the area they’re positioned on is swampland. We’d be at an advantage attacking there. Spanish troops are less well trained than the French. And on such uneven terrain, our Miquelets would move around far better than regiments accustomed to fighting in formation.” He rubbed his eyes. “Coordinating the attack with the troops inside the city will be no easy task. Particularly if we decide to strike at night, which we’d need to do to compensate for our lack of numbers — use the element of surprise. But if we do our part and Villarroel does his — no doubt he will — I don’t see why we shouldn’t succeed.”

Well, this was the point of the expedition, to free Barcelona from the Bourbon siege. Everyone agreed that it was risky but not impossible. There was still the issue of the deputy: an attack by night, among five thousand men in swampy terrain, would be too much for old Berenguer. It would be fraught with danger. In the tumult of battle, and in the dark, anything might happen. That Deputy Berenguer was a good-for-nothing blackguard didn’t make him any less important a personage. He’d be quite a prize for the Bourbons, and it would be a heavy blow to the Catalans to lose him. No, he wouldn’t be killed. But they’d be in a position to mount him on a donkey and ride him around with a cylinder on his head.

Berenguer put his hands to his face and, in a pitiful performance, said the last thing he wanted was to be an obstacle for the fatherland. Finally, he had realized that’s what he was. The attempt must be made, he said. All he required was four trustworthy soldiers to be his bodyguards. If the situation became ugly, these four would have the blessed job of slitting his throat before the enemy kidnapped him.

The cheek of the man! For the duration of the expedition he’d been cowering, and now he wanted to make himself out as the hero. It was the height of imposture, and that in an era when heroism was the commonest currency. Men like Villarroel and Dalmau, warriors like Ballester and Busquets, would never make proclamations about their willingness to lay down their lives: They took it for granted, and would do it without a second’s hesitation. And there we had Deputy Berenguer, measuring his every word for its epic qualities, for how it would sound in the annals.

I stepped forward. “Oh, don’t worry about four men to slit your throat, Your Excellence. One would be sufficient. Me.”

“Zuviría!” he cried. “I’ve had enough of your insolence. Think you’re the army joker, don’t you? When we get back, the first thing I’m going to do is have you thrown in the Pi dungeons!”

Next, one of Berenguer’s oafs made a proposal: Try and reach the coast, and from there send the deputy off in a ship somewhere, before tackling the cordon. Everyone was happy — Dalmau because it meant being free from Berenguer, and Berenguer because it meant he’d be out of harm’s way.

Ballester and his light cavalry were sent ahead as an advance party, as usual, to be sure the nearby paths and trails were clear of Bourbons, and that the deputy could therefore be evacuated. I went with them. We reached a place called Alella by nightfall; to avoid unpleasant surprises, we chose to camp on the beach rather than trying at a house in the town.

During the ride, Ballester had seemed more on guard than usual. I put my sleeping mat next to his, the sand for a mattress. We bedded down a stone’s throw from the sea. The day had been clear, and the stars shone in the sky above. Like that poetic detail, my dear Waltraud? Pish, I say! If it was night, and there weren’t any clouds, why on earth wouldn’t the stars be shining? Anyway, you can keep it in — it will help give an idea of our melancholy mood that night. We were engaged in a cruel war, but the gentle cadence of the waves and the sound of the crickets cradled us for one peaceful moment: a feeling that moved me to speak.

“I want you to know something. I thought Mataró was an outrage as well.”

Ballester didn’t answer. Offended by his silence, I protested: “I’m trying to apologize! Though I’m hardly to blame.”

“Your Cannae went to the dogs,” he said finally.

“True. And the way we’re headed, there’s more bloodshed to come. Even if things go according to plan,” I lamented, looking up at the sky, “thousands will die. If only Vauban were alive. . ”

“What are you complaining about? It’s a war, people die. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be war.”

I decided to change the subject. “Are you married, Ballester?” I asked.

“No, I have some women, but none of them are my wives. You?”

“There’s one who’s as good as my wife. I think she was a whore before me. Something like that.”

“Are you being serious?” said Ballester, taken aback — and not much could surprise that man.

“Whore, mischief maker, thief. . What does it matter? Needs must, these days. I live in a house along with her, an old man, a dwarf, and a young boy. You’ve met the boy.”

“I have?” he said, again surprised.

“Yes, when you laid siege to us in that masía.”

Ballester pulled his blanket over himself. “I only remember,” he said, yawning, “that I’d never seen such a soft lad.”

“You’re right there,” I said, and with the thought of Anfán, a daft feeling of happiness rose up my neck. “Though I’m not his father.”

“But you treat him as a son,” Ballester pointed out, yawning again.

“Well, let’s just say that, to him, I’m the one who makes the rules. That’s all.”

We were both tired, and Ballester’s eyes began to fall shut, but I pushed his arm again. “Do you have children, Ballester?”

Opening his eyes again, he looked up at the stars. “I think so. Maybe one or two. Difficult to know for certain. Women are always claiming I’m the father, though all they really want is the leader’s money.”

“But you’re not bringing them up.”

He sneered. “How could I? Their mothers don’t want for anything. I take care of all that.”

I tugged on his sleeve again, more earnestly still. “Ballester, I want to ask you something. Something between you and me.”

He lifted himself half up, suspecting some trick, his usual forest animal cautiousness. But all I wanted to know was: “Why do you fight?”

He meditated for a few moments, taking a fistful of sand and letting it drain away. As a prompt, I said, “I don’t need a long speech, you can keep it short,” before adding: “A word, please, just a word. It’s all I ask.”

But to my disappointment, he lay down again and, with a sigh, said simply: “If you haven’t understood it yet, what would be the point of telling you now?”

4

Perhaps I should not have been so surprised by the aberration that next took place. The full extent of Red Pelts’ mad legalism, the false emptiness of their patriotism — which was about to become apparent on the beach at Alella — anyone would have been hard pushed to surmise. My only thought at the time was that, finally, we were about to be rid of Deputy Berenguer and his clot-headed retinue.

The body of the army arrived early in the morning, without incident. Meanwhile, Ballester and I negotiated with some locals over requisitioning a boat, one of a decent size but light and swift. The plan was for Deputy Berenguer and his advisers and assistants to depart at twilight, and sail away under cover of dark.

The old man kicked into life for once. He ordered a security perimeter be established, with the men positioned at the high points that dominated the bay. Five thousand men on guard struck me as excessive, but I shrugged and got on with it. All Pelts esteemed protocol very highly, and I just thought Deputy Berenguer wanted to make a show of his eminence.

Ballester and his men were the only ones exempt from guard duty. While the rest of the army took up positions on hilltops and where any paths entered the area, they hunkered down in a fisherman’s tavern in Alella, on the outskirts of the town and about a hundred yards away from the beach. I could see what they were about, but I was supposed to be taking part in seeing Berenguer off.

“Don’t forget to pay for what you drink,” was all I said. “We’re not Bourbons.”

Coming back to camp, I found Berenguer sprawled in his chair with five or six of his officers around him, Dalmau and Shitson included. They’d begun without me, the babe of the expedition. Dalmau was making a florid farewell speech.

“Excuse me for interrupting,” said Berenguer as I came in. “But I ought to point out, you and all the rest of the senior officers will also be setting sail with me.”

I was standing behind Dalmau and, like him, was stupefied by this.

“Pardon me?” said Dalmau, as though he’d misheard. “How can we come with you? If I and the other officers aren’t here, who’s going to give orders to the men?”

“Everyone from lieutenant colonel up,” Berenguer said. “All are to return with me to Barcelona. It’s an order. No discussions.”

Abandon five thousand men! Not carry out the attack on the cordon! All these months of hardship and sacrifice for nothing! We found this injustice, this monumental lunacy, so hard to digest that neither Dalmau nor any of the other officers reacted.

“But Your Excellence,” Dalmau finally said, extremely disconcerted, “this isn’t possible. Who will lead the attack on the cordon?”

“I believe we have a commander eager to gain his stripes in war,” said Berenguer. “The troops will be in good hands.”

He meant Shitson! It was tantamount to discharging the troops. There hadn’t been time for the new recruits to forge bonds with their leaders by taking part in any conflict. Now, if their leaders abandoned them, they were also sure to go back on their promises. Dalmau’s regiment would disintegrate; since they were light on veterans, personal ties were extremely important to them (as they are in any army, to be fair). What would they do if their commander left them on some beach in the middle of nowhere, without any explanations, and now to take orders from some reprobate? We might as well hand them straight over to the Bourbons.

The other officers, though speechless, complied, following Berenguer and his oafs aboard. Not Dalmau. He stood where the gangway touched down on the beach, refusing to go aboard, and becoming increasingly vocal in his opposition to the decision. One of the men who’d already gone aboard rebuked Dalmau. An order was an order. Did he think he was the only one who felt this to be an affront to his dignity?

“Not at all,” said Dalmau. “But again, it isn’t just or reasonable to leave my regiment, as well as other equally dignified officers, at the orders of a man who has shown himself to be anything but.”

While Dalmau and Berenguer continued to argue, I ran back up to the tavern, barging open the door. Seeing me in such a state, Ballester thought we were under attack. If only that had been so!

“They want to leave!” I shouted. “Tell the lads!”

At first he didn’t take my meaning.

“They want to leave,” I said again. “Not only Berenguer and his aides. The order’s been given for all officers to sail, all except Shitson! We have to put a stop to it! Get the men together! The deputy might change his mind if we kick up enough of a fuss.”

Ballester promptly did as I said, for once. He and his men left the tavern and rode out to the perimeter positions. I went back to the boat, another wearying dash down the beach. The argument had gone up a few notches, with Dalmau still refusing to board and all the other officers already having done so. I’d never seen the usually affable Dalmau so furious. I began shouting and screaming as well, using far less decorous language than Dalmau, as you can imagine.

Up in the surrounding hillsides, the news began reaching the troops. They turned to the sea to look, when they were supposed to be looking out for a possible attack. Dozens, hundreds, of men began streaming down to the beach, none of them fully understanding what was happening. Up on deck, one of the officers beseeched Berenguer to order Dalmau to embark. “Otherwise,” he said, “we’re all done for.”

Berenguer shouted at Dalmau from his wheelchair: Either he embarked immediately, or he’d be tried for insubordination. For a few moments, Dalmau gazed out at the waves as they broke on the shoreline, before turning to me: “Come, Zuviría.” Still I refused. He took me by the elbow and added: “A direct order from the deputy of the military estate cannot be disobeyed.” And then he whispered: “Plus, someone has to be there in Barcelona to say what’s gone on.”

I’m neither proud nor ashamed to say I was the last to take the few steps up that wooden gangway and board the ship. Seeing their entire high command getting into this small ship, leaving them behind, the men came careering toward the beach. Five thousand armed men, coming after us from all sides; Berenguer’s oafs nearly pissed themselves. Berenguer called out for the anchor to be weighed—“Posthaste!”—and what happened next is something that has stayed with me all my many days.

In spite of the misdeed, those five thousand men did not come and try to kill anyone. They gathered in the bay, looking out at us not with hate so much as the incomprehension of an abandoned dog. If I couldn’t understand why we were leaving them, how were they supposed to? I saw Ballester and his men, grouped on a ridge to one side of the beach. He knew what was going on. Their centaur silhouettes, lit by the Mediterranean twilight, filled me with an unbearably weighty feeling of shame.

Before we had sailed two hundred feet, I saw a fair-haired youngster wade out up to his knees. He stood out to me because of the blond plaits he wore on either side of his head, which reminded me of Anfán. He was waving something above his head. Then the rest of the troops began chanting. At that distance, the noise of the sea and the wind made it difficult to hear. I was the only person aboard looking back at the coast. I listened harder. When I realized what it was, I thumped the deck four times with my fists. “Turn back! Turn back!” I cried. “Damn it all, turn the ship around!”

The oafs came over, ordering me to be quiet. For once I was able to say what I thought about them to their faces: “Imbeciles! The deputy’s forgotten the silver mace!”

And so it was. The men were shouting, “The Club, the Club!” Berenguer and his oafs had been in such a hurry to get away from their own men that they’d managed to forget about the supreme symbol of Catalan resistance.

How is it possible for a people to be so brave and at the same time so submissive? I’ll tell you: It’s possible because, as Alella demonstrated, they had far more faith in their free institutions than in the people running them. Berenguer had left behind the silver mace, while the ragtag army he’d shown so much contempt for had remembered it. And it didn’t even occur to them to hang him — they just wanted to make sure the Club was safe.

The boat made a slow and humiliating about-turn. All those aboard were so ashamed or so afraid that they didn’t want to disembark to go and fetch the mace. Because I’d raised the alarm, they seemed to think I was the man for the job. Pish! I understood how unsettled the deputy was when his oafs came over, again imploring me: “Please.”

I didn’t even have to get down from the boat. Its hull wasn’t deep, and as we came back to shore, the lad waded out to meet us, up to his chest in water. I leaned over the side and took the outstretched Club. As soon as I had it, the boat pushed off again. I shouted back at him: “What’s your name?”

He replied, but the wind must have changed direction, and I didn’t hear. I rue that wind so, so very much that it makes me feel like never saying another word. What’s the worth of a book that contains Berenguer’s name, the abominable Antoni Berenguer, and not that of the young boy?

I spent the return voyage seated in a corner between two barrels, my arms crossed and a blanket over my head so that I wouldn’t have to speak to anyone. My first thought was that the whole thing was a conspiracy, that Berenguer was secretly taking orders from the Bourbons. In fact, after Barcelona fell, the word was that he did serve the new government, immediately and with servile acquiescence. But I’m not really one for conspiracies. He was a weak man, that’s all, and when a man is in a position of power, weakness and treachery are apt to merge. Perhaps he made all the officers set sail with him so they’d have a share of the shame, or perhaps he was worried that an attack on the cordon would cost too many officers’ lives. Being from good families, the Red Pelts would have been unhappy if so many of their own had been led to slaughter. Who knows. It’s hardly the most important thing.

We were willing to wage war on the Two Crowns for the sake of our constitutions and liberties, a single city against the immense might of two allied empires. But, I ask, how are you supposed to fight your very own government?

As for the upshot of our disastrous expedition, the less said, the better. When we arrived back in Barcelona, Don Antonio wasn’t exactly the calmest he’d ever been. Thank goodness I wasn’t there when the news of Berenguer’s cowardice reached him, the Mataró disaster, the calamity of abandoning an entire army on a beach. Apparently, Don Antonio threw his staff of office to the floor, proclaiming: “An offense to God! A disservice to the king! And ruination for the homeland!”

Don Antonio demanded explanations, and when he came to us, Dalmau and I made no bones about what had happened. He wanted Berenguer hanged from the city walls. As was to be expected, the Red Pelts rushed to Berenguer’s defense. But his conduct had been so dire that even they couldn’t keep him from being put on trial. I kept my thoughts to myself; honest justice would be out of the question. He came away completely unscathed. Don Antonio didn’t have jurisdiction over public figures, so Berenguer was merely placed under house arrest. Given that he couldn’t get out of his wheelchair anyway, will someone please tell me what kind of punishment this was? The justice of the Red Pelts, that’s what!

With Berenguer off, exiled in his gilded cage, what happened to the five thousand men who had been abandoned? The moment Dalmau touched down in Barcelona, he chartered a return flotilla — out of his family’s coffers — to go and rescue them. It got there too late. They’d scattered, unsurprisingly. Some had joined Busquets’s group, or others’. Hundreds had been captured by the Bourbons, and you can guess what treatment they received. A good many more simply returned home. Who can blame them? The rest carried on harrying the Bourbons on the outskirts of Barcelona, of their own accord. But the expedition’s strategic objective had failed utterly.

Amazingly, some were willing to go on to Barcelona and made it there, forcing their way through the cordon. Small groups of cavalry, with the darkness as cover, charged in like berserkers. In the middle of the night, we saw part of the cordon light up with flashes of rifle fire, and heard the wild riders howling. They crossed the less protected swampy areas and, when they reached the open encampments, hurtled in like meteors. A little while later, ten, twenty, thirty men shot through into the city. .

We never heard another word about Shitson. Either the Bourbons hanged him, or those troops he’d been left to lead did it themselves. If you want my view, knowing what Dalmau’s men were like, I’d say it was probably the latter. But this is all supposition. If I ever did find out, I’ve forgotten. Thanks be to forgetfulness!

Come on, enough of the weepy bits. Chin up, never mind! That’s what I say. Or, as we said in Barcelona, via fora to the sadness. At least I made it home in one piece — no mean feat. Having embraced the members of my odd little family, I collapsed into an armchair, gazing on the walls as though civility were a distant memory. I didn’t talk much. I looked out from our balcony, which had a view of the city walls. The cooper company was on patrol up on the Saint Clara bastion. They’d lit several small bonfires to cook their dinner over. It was good to know they were there, and to know that it was for one reason: so that I could sleep safely in my home that night. By this point I had far more faith in these coopers-turned-soldiers than in any unit of regulars.

Nan brought in a pot containing hot water and left it at my feet: his way of celebrating my return. And Amelis dropped a handful of salt in — my God, a hot footbath, surrounded by your nearest and dearest. This was a home. Anfán bade me tell them about my heroic exploits. .

As I took off my boots, I turned my mind to those interminable marches, day and night, all those thousands of men with threadbare espadrilles on their feet, or simply going barefoot. I thought of the smell of burned gunpowder, and of the dead we’d left behind, to no end. I could still smell the stench of rusted bayonets and old leather. And all of it for what? So that that swine Berenguer could sit in his little palace, surrounded by his dozens of oafs, denying that he’d had anything to do with anything.

“Heroic exploits?” I said. “Know the one thing I’ve brought with me to say? That the reason I went was so you might never have to.”

I wasn’t fully happy until I laid my head down on my pillow. Amelis joined me a little while later. The room was dark and I couldn’t see her, I only heard the door. She came in and got on top of me, both of us unclothed. Food had begun to grow scarce in the city, and she was thinner than before. Through the window came the occasional far-off explosion, illuminating the room, accompanied by sounds of artillery. Bourbon artillery, not ours, but I felt sure we had nothing to fear. They were only calibrating their cannons in case they decided to attack the Capuchin convent one day, and that was outside the main walls. Amelis’s hair fell over my face, and I could smell the mint tea she’d drunk before coming in. Running a hand over my face, she said: “Do you want to go to sleep?”

Sleep? I hadn’t heard anything so funny in a long while. Chin up, Martí Zuviría, never mind! There are few things as intense as making love to the sound of a cannonade. And in this life, take it from me, there’s only one thing that ranks above first love, and that’s the second.

I forgot to say anything in the last chapter about the expedition’s very last upshot. Well, I’ll do so now, and that’ll be that. You put the chapters in order as best you can, that’s what I pay you for.

I found myself up on the Saint Clara bastion early one morning, involved in a cannonade, when Francesc Castellví appeared. He was the captain of a Valencian company, with pretensions to be a historian. But there are some who don’t know when it’s the right — or the wrong — time for courteous greetings.

From time to time, our sentries would spy a group of enemy foragers in no-man’s-land. The alarm would be raised across the bastion tops and our cannons trained on the foragers. From the cordon, the Bourbons would use their longer-range artillery to provide cover, and an artillery exchange would commence.

I thought it the most ridiculous waste of ammunition. At that distance, our cannon fire almost never reached the besiegers’ positions, and vice versa. But so things go in war. Our chief gunner, a man named Costa, asked me to authorize returning fire. We were still well stocked with gunpowder, and his Mallorcans could use the chance to train the city gunners.

“Great that you’re back in one piece!” said Castellví, shouting to make himself heard over the detonations.

“Right, yes,” I said, otherwise occupied and as good as ignoring him. “Thanks.”

“And you look well. A little thinner, yes.”

“Haven’t you got a company of men to be looking out for?”

“No, not today. Today’s a rest day for us. I’m going around visiting friends.”

There I was, giving orders to the munitions carriers, verifying hits and misses, and keeping a close check on how much gunpowder was being used. And here was Castellví asking after my health.

Most of the enemy’s shots fell short. One or two would reach the walls, but so tired by that point that they’d bounce off the walls, to the rumbling, scraping sound of stones. Crrrack! The cannonballs would roll slowly back down the rampart walls, wreathed in smoke. Each army used the same caliber, which meant each could also use the other’s; the same cannonballs would end up going back and forth time after time. Some became airborne letters. Using chicken blood or carbon, the Bourbons would write, for instance, “Up yours, rebels.” To which our men would reply, on a different part of the cannonball: “Stick this up your Bourbon behinds.” That sort of thing, with pictures of cocks, anuses, and mouths to match.

“And you must be happy your little friend’s back, too!” persevered Castellví.

“Friend? What friend do you mean?”

“What friend do you think I mean? Ballester! Along with his men!”

“No!” I cried. “There must be some mistake! They stayed in Alella! We’ll never see them around these parts again!”

“It’s true, I tell you! They crossed the cordon in the night! On horseback, just before dawn, a few hours ago! They’re here in the city!”

“You’re wrong, I say! It can’t be him! Ballester will never forgive us for leaving them the way we did!”

The Mallorcans were shouting out orders, and what with their devilish accents, the noise of the cannons, and the commotion of the carriers, it was almost impossible to hear. We’d have lost our voices soon enough. Where were the Vaubanians to teach the Valencians sign language?

“It was Ballester!” Castellví insisted exasperatingly. “This war must be recounted afterward, down to the very last detail! And I am determined to do that!”

“Fine! Recount the war, off you go. I’m rather busy just now waging that war!” Before he left, I added: “But you’re wrong! Ballester hates us! What on earth could move him to risk his hide getting back into Barcelona?”

I stopped midsentence. Very often it’s the words themselves that clarify thought, and not the other way around.

“What’s wrong?” said Castellví. “You’ve gone completely white! Cannonballs frighten you?”

“Stand in for me, would you?” I shouted at the top of my voice. “I’ll owe you one!”

“But I’m infantry!” he protested. “I haven’t the first clue—”

And now I’m going to leave you to guess the reason for my haste and where I was headed. My dear vile Waltraud knows. But how clever you are, my lovely little buffalo!

There could be only one motive for Ballester to come back: to murder Berenguer. According to his Miquelet logic, the aberration at Alella wasn’t down to politics but to real individuals, and as such, the only answer could be to slit real throats.

I ran all the way to Berenguer’s home and arrived panting and just in time. Ballester and his men were coming around the corner of a thin street alongside the residence, and they had knives in their belts and sacks covering their heads. I stood between them and Berenguer’s home — the side street so thin, my body was enough to block the way.

“You don’t salute a superior?” I said to Ballester.

“Out of my way.”

Well, he did always make a virtue of concision.

“Think about what will happen if you knock down this door and go and kill Berenguer,” I said. “Think. He’ll be dead, and you’ll be hanged. The deputy of the military estate, and one of the city’s own heroes, killed by our own side. Just think of what it would do to morale — and how that plays into the enemy’s hands. They’ll say we’re devouring ourselves likes rats in a sack.”

Ballester tore his hood off in disgust. “Think I want to kill Berenguer? Do you really think that? No, I didn’t want to come back, I’m not one for risking life and limb to squash a cockroach.” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of his men behind him. “But they did! I set out with nine men and came back with six. Want them just to forget? Fine, you tell them so!”

Men with blunt characters don’t know how to ask for help; pride prevents them. But, weighing Ballester’s words, I could see he was asking me to intercede.

I reminded them of all the sleepless nights, the marches and the skirmishes I’d been alongside them on, which was most of them. I made light of the day I enjoined them to leave Barcelona. A lot had happened since.

“Berenguer is a very old man,” I said. “He hasn’t got long left to live. To make that life slightly shorter, the price is your lives, plus putting the city in danger. Is that really what you want?”

I myself don’t know how I managed to get them to accompany me to a tavern. We found one of the few still open in the city. The alcohol cheered them up considerably, as though they’d never really wanted to kill. They laughed, sang songs, and drank until passing out — all except Ballester and me. From far ends of the table, we exchanged glances, sharing something beyond sadness or bitterness.

“You still haven’t suffered enough,” Don Antonio had said to me. And I swear I had set out on the expedition prepared to face whatever came, in order to strip away my soul’s resentment. But what I didn’t know was that pain always comes for us when least we expect it. I believed the expedition would be a chance to put my learning into action, and what really happened was that my ideas about the world came tumbling down. The worst thing was, in spite of that, in spite of the downheartedness that came with seeing that the rules governing us are feigning and false, I was no nearer to learning The Word. “You still haven’t suffered enough.” In that tavern I saw a look different from those on all the other fearful faces I’d seen. For if all the misfortunes, all the terrible sights during the expedition, hadn’t changed me sufficiently, what was I going to have to sacrifice in order to see my light?

That night, through jug after jug of wine, conversing silently with Ballester, I didn’t yet know the truly terrible, and at the same time unforeseen, thing: that the sky was just about to come crashing down on our heads.

5

Now, all these years later, I look back on Christmas 1713 with more affection than it merits. Being on duty up on the ramparts was freezing work. Below us, the icebound palisade stakes, and beyond them, the enemy cordon. Wind, rain, and, up above, a leaden sky, grayer than a mule’s belly. But when we were on guard on the bastions, high on their prowlike edges, there was always one thing we could do to lift our spirits, and that was to look back across the city we were defending.

Throughout the siege, the Red Pelts were consumed with the idea of maintaining calm among the populace. They’d ordered Barcelonans to fill balconies and windows with lamps and candles at nightfall, so the streets wouldn’t be as dark. Turning around, you’d be presented with a lit-up Barcelona. During those Christmas nights, there were more lamps than ever, and the shades were made of red, yellow, and green glass, making the city streets wink and glitter like a nocturnal rainbow.

1714 arrived, and everything carried on as it had been. Three, four, five more months passed, and still the same. Spring burst upon us, and everyone, including me, was becoming fed up with the siege. There was nothing to contend with, only the tedium, the occasional skirmish, and the fatigue that affected the free citizens-turned-soldiers. In Bazoches terms, any siege lasting so long would be considered a failure. More than that: an outright aberration, a complete departure from the very definition of a siege. Pópuli would have needed to sweep us aside within a week, yet there we were, and not an Attack Trench in sight.

Anyway, what I mean is that, in the spring of 1714, I’d had nearly all I could take. Everyone had, save one man: Don Antonio de Villarroel. Among my many tasks, one of the most demanding was accompanying him when he was inspecting positions. One bastion, another, the curtain walls covering the stretches between the bastions; Don Antonio was never satisfied. More soldiers were needed here, more cannons there; and over there, that old breach hadn’t been closed up entirely. On May 19 that year, I was taking the brunt of one of his tirades when we were interrupted by a heavier than usual artillery bombardment.

Silent explosions could be seen coming from the enemy cannons. Then you’d hear a faint whistling sound, followed, with a sonorous crrrack, by the impact of cannonball on ramparts. But it was different on this occasion. They were aiming high, and the cannonballs sailed over the walls and came down inside the city, on the roofs or west faces of civilian buildings.

“Lunatics!” I shouted. “Here, we’re here! Are you using your rectal holes to aim with?”

The cannonade continued, more and more off-target shots. I was raging. Don Antonio made me be quiet — he’d understood what was happening long before I had. “They know precisely what they’re about,” he said.

“But Don Antonio,” I protested, “they’re missing us by miles.”

He turned and went over to the command post. I followed behind. The light finally turned on in my head: They were shelling the city itself!

Years studying in Bazoches to learn how to storm a stronghold with minimal casualties, and here was Pópuli, the butcher, aiming his cannons at civilian houses rather than at the ramparts! It was a feat so unusual, such a departure from the Bazoches precepts, and from the slightest glimmer of human civility, and so flagrant, sordid, and brutal, that I didn’t want to believe it was happening. As we ran through the streets, an enormous cannonball landed on a four-story building. The facade crumbled, and as the stones and beams came crashing down, I heard amid the noise the wailing of a child. The sound of a child in pain will always stir up all-consuming hatred. I briefly went back up to the top of the bastion. I remember taking out a telescope and scanning the Bourbon positions. Casting around the fajina parapets, among which their cannons were concealed, my lens came to rest on a man standing still between all the smoke and the to-ing and fro-ing of the gunners. He, too, was looking through a telescope. We were looking at each other. He raised an arm in greeting — mockingly, mocking our agony. And then I recognized him: It was Verboom, that utter swine.

The high command, including Costa, were immediately called together in an emergency meeting. Everyone aside from Costa was unsettled; chewing a sprig of parsley and speaking in his usual dispassionate monotone, he seemed almost not to care: “They’re using long-range cannons. But even with them, they can’t reach all the neighborhoods, only the one nearest the walls, the Ribera barrio. It’s only a three-gun battery.”

I couldn’t help myself from making a selfish comment: “And as luck would have it, Ribera is where my family lives.”

Some of the officers called on Don Antonio to send out a couple of battalions against the battery. Others thought the cannonade was an attempt to provoke a large sortie that was doomed to fail. Still others argued for a missive to be sent to Pópuli, threatening the execution of prisoners if the shelling was not called off. Our resident parsley-chewer came up with a simple but brilliant solution: We needed to take our most accurate cannons, the shorter-range ones, closer to the enemy positions, and from there destroy their battery. How? Sallying forth from the city with one whole battery of our own.

“But,” I objected, “that will also put the enemy in a position to fire on our cannons.”

His answer was very much that of a gunner: “What is infantry for if not to provide cover for artillery?”

You could never tell if Costa was being serious. He fished around in his pouch and looked crestfallen to find himself out of parsley. “Give me and my Mallorcans ten minutes to carry out our own bombardment,” he said, looking up. “That’s all we’ll need.”

When it came to it, five minutes was more than enough. Don Antonio sent out two full battalions, and these attacked the cordon in ostentatiously well-ordered ranks, with twenty drummers announcing the onslaught. The Bourbons sent twice their number to tackle them, falling for the trap. Making the most of the diversion, Costa set out with six cannons. Our cannonballs landed right on the heads of that poor Bourbon battery. The Mallorcans hooked the light cannons back onto the carriages and fell back into the city. This was mud in Pópuli’s eye — outmaneuvered, and three cannons down.

Infuriated, he brought together all his cannons and pushed the cordon a little closer to the city — close enough to put the whole of Barcelona within range, save the seafront. The attack of May 19 was nothing next to what was about to befall us. The bombardment of the whole urban district commenced. An uninterrupted and systematic barrage, raining down upon us night and day for months.

Such military terror as that has a great fondness for destruction on a grand scale. The tall defiles formed by the city’s buildings, along with the narrow streets, were too great a temptation. Missile upon missile they hurled, with all the glee of a child stamping on ant nests. I can still see streets thick with fleeing civilians as the walls around them erupted like pus-filled pimples.

To all Barcelonans, this was the inferno; for Pópuli, a calculated measure. His reasoning being that, in the face of such terror, the people would pressure its government to open the city gates. In a sense, putting all emotion aside, it was the right move from Pópuli. Would it be worth us paying with our homes and our cathedrals, our very lives? The army defending Barcelona was made up of militia fighting to defend their families. Now, with those loved ones coming under fire, if they were going to be killed anyway, where was the sense in continuing the resistance? But Pópuli had acted in anger, and he had miscalculated. The people didn’t think along the lines he’d expected. Quite the opposite.

Nor even did Martí Zuviría, an engineer trained in coolheaded decision-making. Precisely because I knew how barbarous the enemy was, and that they would stop at nothing, it was my duty to plead for the white flag to be shown. Why did I not? I don’t know. Perhaps we’d gone too far for that. In spite of what I’d learned at Bazoches, beyond its walls, the reality of war was altogether different. The marquis’s rationale was not equal to the changes being wrought in the world at that time.

Plus, Pópuli’s maneuver merely demonstrated his impotence and frustration. Rather than denting people’s faith, the bombardment — by showing that Pópuli didn’t believe he could overcome the defenders — was a spur. Further — and something we didn’t know yet — Madrid had made it known that, because of his negligence, Pópuli was to be replaced. He’d never have the chance to ride victorious into Barcelona. Pópuli took his frustration out on the Barcelonans. The sustained flurries of missiles came in fifteen-minute intervals, precise and forbidding. So it was for months. Some streets took such a battering, you had to resort to memory to discern where you were.

Old Barcelona, always lighthearted, full of joy and cheer, now coming under aerial torment. Cannonballs that were the enemies of all intelligence, including the printing press: One fell on the offices of the city’s most venerable newspaper, the Diario del Sitio, killing its entire writing staff as well as the proprietors. Anti-religious cannonballs: One came through the rose window at the Church of Pi during a service, slaughtering the parishioners. Cannonballs, that is to say, that were nocturnal, blind, and deranged, because one also killed three of Philip’s agents as they were pinning lampoons to a wall. Poor boys, in quite a state they were. I came across a paintbrush attached to a wall — the point about this brush being that it was also attached to a hand, and that hand to half an arm. Up to the elbow was left. Its owner was putting up lampoons when the cannonball fell on his head. Anyway, the teams of cleaners didn’t hurry to take it down, leaving it as an example and a lesson to traitors.

All we could do was evacuate the Barcelonans to the beach or up to the mountain of Montjuic, the only places beyond the cannons’ reach. The minority went up to Montjuic — those who had servants they could send back down for provisions. So on the beach, an enormous encampment of exiles was established. First mattresses were laid out, and over those the most sturdy and welcoming tents. The feminine touch was evident in them. They always used their best linens, quilts, and curtains for the awnings — the most visible part of the tent. A kind of unspoken competitiveness broke out, roofs covered with damask silks and colorful cashmere. Around the tents, domestic furniture was placed, some of it baroque in style. It made sense that the owners brought their most precious belongings, so they could keep an eye on them. But what a contrast! Humble cooking fires in the sand, and around them oak tables with spiral legs, fine mirrors, wardrobes taller than a person, upholstered chairs, and even one or two up-to-date lady’s dressing tables, toujours à la mode.

The massive bombardment had something isocratic about it: In the face of such an onslaught, everyone became equal; where you came from and your social standing ceased to matter. The grouping together on the beaches, the immodesty of contact, provoked the opposite of Pópuli’s desire. These people, neighbors but now in a new sense, no longer separated by walls as before, came to form an open-air community. Forced together, they felt more unified than ever. The children ran in the sand, the women cooked together. Elderly men conversed, sitting smoking their pipes; there were not many male adults to be seen besides.

Between the beach and the city ramparts, the city was one of deserted streets and abandoned buildings. And what an unprecedented sight, these streets. The rumbling of the cannonballs opened doors. Many of the buildings’ damaged facades had dropped away like masks, exposing three or four storeys with furniture and beds still in place. People couldn’t carry everything, and so much unguarded wealth was a considerable temptation. The Red Pelts were nothing if not rigorous, though, and they placed guards on the streets with a license to kill.

One of the first looters to be caught was called Cigalet (a nickname, roughly translatable as “little chicken”). Following a summary trial, he was sentenced to hang — immediately, as an example to others. Cigalet was well known, making it a high-profile case: It so happened that the first person caught with his hand in the silver chest was also the city’s main executioner. His assistant, who was betrothed to Cigalet’s daughter, had to do the honors. Cigalet was far calmer about it than his future son-in-law. Walking up the scaffold steps, the prisoner joked with the crowd. They said encouraging things, lightly mocking him, halfway between irony and sympathy. “Remember your promotion is down to me,” he said as his son-in-law-to-be placed the noose over his head. What a scene! I wonder what the wedding night must have been like.

Poor Cigalet at least got a trial; subsequent looters were never even brought before a tribunal. There were stakes in three different places in the city — the looter would be tied to whichever happened to be nearest to the crime, then shot. No question, any city under siege is subject to extraordinary measures, but it was as though the Red Pelts’ regime and the bestiality of the Bourbons had become two wheels on the same axle.

Members of the Civil Guard were recruited from the lowest of the low. There wasn’t any choice, given that the honorable citizens were manning the ramparts as part of the Coronela militia. The Red Pelts enlisted the procurers, tricksters, tavern ruffians, masterless goons, back-alley cutthroats, and hallucinating drunkards. And these were the ones charged with upholding the law. The naval blockade had seen food prices soar — most looters were impelled not by greed but by hunger. It meant that, by government edict, criminals were given the right to execute those who were starving.

My dear vile Waltraud bids me not to erupt, but how can I not? Calling together these roving patrols, the Red Pelts appealed to order and public calm: the “Octavian peace,” they called it, in their most affected language. I’ll tell you now what that Octavian peace consisted of: The sky was tumbling down on our heads — in the most literal sense — and right until the last day, the patrols were standing guard at the homes of wealthy botifleros such as the ones who had deserted Mataró. When a skeletal child or an old toothless woman slipped in through a hole in the wall, trying to find food, there those killers were, armed by the government itself, tying the hungry to a post and shooting them dead. Bourbons rained down death from without, and Red Pelts from within. There you have it.

There is no such thing as a fortress fully covered by a roof. And fiery tempests were raining down on us from above. When it was all over, seven in ten of Barcelona’s houses were either in ruins or had holes punched through them by cannonballs. In just the first two months of the bombardment, in a city with a population of 50,000, precisely 27,275 cannonballs were said to have fallen. Every Barcelonan, therefore, was treated to half a cannonball each by Philip V.

I wonder to this day who the person might have been to keep such close count. I picture him at the top of a bell tower with tablet and chalk, impassive, bored, noting down the impacts with dashes and scores. Which will be where our proverb comes from: “A man who’s out of work counts cannonballs.”

Meanwhile, news reached us from the enemy lines. Pópuli was now to be replaced as commander of the besieging army. Strange though it may sound, this was the worst news possible.

To replace the useless Pópuli, Little Philip had asked his grandfather to send French reinforcements, including their best general. Guess who that was. Who else but the faithful, invincible marshal of Almansa, scourge of Louis XIV’s enemies: Who else but Jimmy.

According to our spies, he had already crossed the Pyrenees, the cream of the French army in tow. They were advancing slowly because of the poor state of the roads and because — pity for us! — of the heavy artillery they were bringing with them.

It was as though someone had ripped my lungs from my chest when I heard this. Jimmy. His cruel and calculating nature, his inexorable determination. I’d have been far happier taking on Satan. Why? Because Jimmy only ever entered the fray if the odds were in his favor.

Don Antonio gave us the news in a military council with the principal commanders. Our agents must have been professionals when it came to counting things, because he then went on to enumerate, battalion by battalion, the French forces Jimmy was bringing with him. I remember the hush that came down. Any officer with half a brain knew what this meant. Nobody spoke the words, but everyone was thinking: “Now what?”

Don Antonio gave me that night off. We’d also moved to the beach, into a basic tent made out of strips of old clothes. To Barcelonans, boredom was like a sickness, and on the beach, they kept it at bay with music. The truth is, dining out in front of the beach, my troop of children, dwarves, and old men around me, I felt a little lighter.

Amelis and I retired soon after. I was too tired for lovemaking. Our bed could not have been more simple: one blanket under us and one on top, the sand itself our mattress. The tent had very few comforts, but Amelis kept her music box beside the pillow. She opened it. There, in that crude beach tent, the melodies it played had an especially consoling air.

I recounted the war council to Amelis. “The good news is that the siege will be over soon,” I said.

“We’re going to surrender?”

I didn’t think she’d understood. “We’re already at a disadvantage in every department,” I said. “But when these French reinforcements arrive, the mismatch will be too huge. We’ll send an emissary to negotiate terms, honorable ones, probably something safeguarding lives and property. Jimmy won’t oppose that.”

“And that will be that?”

“We’ve held out admirably,” I said with some pride. “Far better than anyone could have asked.”

She grimaced but said nothing.

“What?” I protested. “If it comes to an end now, we’ll keep the house. Otherwise, sooner or later, this bombardment will knock it down.”

She got under the covers, brusquely turning her back. “Some kind of peace,” she grouched. “A year up on the ramparts for what? All that, and you’re just going to let them in, open the gates to the French rather than the Spanish?”

“Tell it to the Red Pelts!” I spat. “They’re the ones stockpiling provisions, selling food to the starving at inflated prices. The poor are already giving in. I was with Castellví yesterday, that Valencian intellectual, and we saw an old woman pass out in the middle of the street. All she knows is that she’s hungry.”

Amelis rolled over to face me. “And when she came around, you asked her if she wanted to surrender?”

“What she wanted was a bite to eat!”

Amelis blew the candle out.

Good old Zuvi was unusually quiet the next day. Curt orders were the only words I spoke. Ballester noticed. I was standing at the prow of one of the bastions, deep in thought, when he came over to me. With his usual Miquelet soft touch, he said: “What the cojones is with you?”

There was no reason to hide the facts from him, and I said what was happening. He answered with typically Miquelet-like bravura: He’d have Berwick for dinner, with a few pears and turnips.

I let out a tired laugh. “You don’t know Jimmy — Marshal Berwick,” I said, correcting myself.

“And you do?” He snorted.

“A little.” I knew him better than I’d wanted to. All that time ago we had been intimate — the memory of the scandal had faded, but his character I never forgot. “Jimmy’s an opportunist. He wouldn’t have taken on the task if it didn’t promise the chance to please his superiors and win further laurels and promotion. He’s bringing the elite of the French army — with them as reinforcements, and a capable commander, they’ll be unstoppable. It’s over.”

I didn’t expect any answer to that. But Ballester came and stood before me. “Know what?” he said in his usual resentful tone. “I put my trust in you once. I said to myself: ‘This one’s different. Maybe there are men in Barcelona who aren’t like the Red Pelts; maybe the war will be a chance to change things.’ That was why we came, so no one could say we weren’t here when it counted. I accepted taking orders from you. And now look at you, whimpering like a frightened little bitch. What did you think? This is war! You’re going to have good and bad moments, and anyone who gives up at the first sign of trouble, well, that only shows he shouldn’t have gotten involved to begin with.”

I stood and faced him. “Work it out!” I shouted. “When Berwick comes, it won’t be Navarran bumpkins we’re up against! He’s bringing Louis’s finest fighters, along with cannons and tons of ammunition. Dragoons, grenadiers, crack troops from the Rhine. The ramparts are in a state, the city half destroyed. Defended by civilians, not soldiers, and most of them famished and ill. I know precisely how Jimmy will go about things, and trust me, either we send an emissary or he’ll crush us.”

“I see it now,” he scoffed. “It’s all still ideas and numbers to you.”

That was too much. “Ideas and numbers that take into account how many have died! How many more? You lost three on the expedition — want them all gone?”

Ballester punched the battlement. “I want their deaths not to have been for nothing!”

“The point of defending a city,” I cried, even more exasperated, “is to save women and children and the sacred places! If we carry on, they’ll all be lost! We fight to safeguard them, not to see them devoured!”

“And the Catalan liberties, the constitutions?” he said. “Who’s going to safeguard them?”

“How should I know?” I said, holding my arms out wide. “Ask Casanova, ask the politicians. I’m just an engineer.”

He gave me the angriest, most accusing glance. “I don’t talk to politicians or engineers,” he said. “I only talk to men.” Then, lowering his voice, he whispered something deeply philosophical (not that he probably knew). “But such are few and far between in this city.”

Before I could manage a response, he turned and walked away.

In the following days, it was tenser than ever between Ballester and me. Rather than trying to do anything about it, I ignored him. When we came into contact, I acted like he wasn’t there. I refused an order to lead his men on a job. Which he took as an insult. Which it was. His problem, I thought. But the absence of our usual arguments, of those disputes both surly and lubricating, rather than easing things, increased the tension between us.

In a sense, we were a reflection of the mood of the city. Understandably, the news of Berwick’s approach didn’t do wonders for morale. And vague promises were all we had from the diplomats outside. Nice little letters from Vienna praising our constancy and fidelity. Doubtless Archduke Charles dictated them while mounting the queen, the two of them doing their utmost to ensure the “so-desired succession.”

During that period one day, I went with Don Antonio to a government meeting. He wanted me to help them understand the parlous state of our defenses. His reception was glacial.

It was beyond the Red Pelts’ powers of comprehension. They were, as a rule, whiners, consummate defeatists, and I thought my report would be used to win over the reticent few. On the contrary. They didn’t want to hear a word of what I had to say. Casanova, in particular, looked straight through me with his dark eyes.

I was very young. The public side of things wasn’t my affair; I’d been giving my all to the defense of the city. But that day, I had a chance to consider something that occurs only between political leaders.

Casanova was against the resistance and had always been. If, reader, you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that he did everything in his power to stop the portcullis from being lowered and the city armed. Why, then, was he now so strongly defending those who wanted to carry on fighting, or why at least did he comply with them?

The answer wasn’t above but below. In France, the Beast’s subordinates obeyed blindly. But in our old besieged city, with the people in turmoil and a government more akin to Athens’s model than Sparta’s, it was the other way around: The leaders did what the governed told them to. Casanova knew there was no way he could challenge the popular will, which was in favor of holding out. His innermost thought? Impossible to know. I imagine — and this is mere supposition — that in his opinion, it was better to remain in control, in the hope that some chance to end it all would present itself, thereby avoiding greater ills.

Don Antonio merely backed up what I had already said: Berwick was bringing with him a force that would crush us; the council could draw its own conclusions. Here I ought to point out a minor detail — something, though, that in such a tight situation, had an effect: Don Antonio didn’t speak Catalan.

Like all educated Catalans, the Red Pelts spoke perfect Castilian. When addressing Don Antonio, they did so in his language, out of deference. But there is something insuperable in Catalans that prevents them from speaking anything but their own tongue to one another. So fragments of the discussions were lost to Don Antonio. I translated for him, whispering in his ear what they were saying when things became heated, which was often. But you surely know good old Zuvi by now: When whoever was speaking became animated, instead of translating the debate, I’d stick my oar in. The only thing the councilors agreed on was the need for drastic measures. And what they came up with was a plan to attack the enemy positions, to raise morale in the city. What a magnificent idea!

Such an attack would be madness. If it went badly, which it was bound to, morale would plummet still further. But then Don Antonio demonstrated perfectly the position he was in: that of a military commander subordinate to a government. He agreed to follow their orders, for all that he personally disagreed.

As in the human body, the nerves in an army are invisible and run from top to bottom. If the officers were unconvinced about the attack, how could the rank and file possibly feel confident? The whole thing was hastily cobbled together. I was one of those to bear the brunt. Orders were sent out in a hurry and got scrambled along the way. I thought I’d been ordered to take part in the assault, but it turned out Don Antonio wanted me in the rearguard. You know, that abject troupe of priests and surgeons meant for evacuating the wounded, and officers whose job it was to stop any who turned back during the opening exchanges, to send them back into the slaughter.

The troops, a thousand men and more, gathered at three of the city gates. The idea was to charge out, form up, and attack the cordon as one. Overrun it and withdraw. Give them a scare so they knew we weren’t intimidated by Berwick. As I say, pure imbecility. Jimmy hadn’t arrived yet, and he wouldn’t care in the slightest about anything that happened before he got there. The Bourbons knew us by that point, and such a limited attack would achieve nothing, nothing besides a gratuitous bloodbath. Dear God, I couldn’t think of anything less lovely than to die on such a beautiful spring day.

There are few feelings to match participating in an attack you feel is bound to fail. The relevant thing was not what the officers said to the men but, rather, what they didn’t say: They shouted at the men to line up but had no words to suggest they believed in the endeavor. I accompanied the priests as they went up and down the ranks, sprinkling the men with holy water and spouting phrases in Latin. We came upon Ballester and his men.

“Oh ho! Here’s our man,” he sneered. “Happy about sending us to certain death?”

“I’ve never argued for harebrained attacks,” I retorted. “That was always you. Or have you forgotten? Attack, attack, attack. Well, here’s your attack!”

I shoved him back into line. But Ballester would never tolerate anyone laying a finger on him. He came back at me, lifting his hand to my face and pushing me, and saying a few choice words about my mother. That was the last straw.

I’ve already mentioned how it had been between Ballester and me before that. Added to that, the night before, Anfán also happened to have put his hand to my face, stroking the same cheek as he sat on my knee and asked me to recount the day’s fighting. After all that time of him being pricklier than a hedgehog, he’d heard me come in and had gotten out of bed to show me some affection. “Jefe, jefe. How many men did you kill today?” And now, a few hours later, it appeared that my last human contact before I died would be with Ballester’s grubby paws.

I hit him with a left. I felt his beard cushion the impact of my knuckles. Ballester, naturally, recovered and came at me. Here was a pretty sight just before an attack: two officers going at it in front of the troops. We fell to the floor and rolled about a bit, kicking and howling. Someone separated us and said: “Shall I arrest him, Colonel?”

“And let him off the hook?” I said, spitting a bolus of blood on the ground. “He’s not getting off that easily. He’ll join the attack like everyone else!”

And so the attack was launched. Our side, all colors under the rainbow, each battalion with its own distinctive tunics, faced by the dour white wall of the Bourbon troops.

An utter disaster. The drums, instead of seeming encouraging, unsettled me. My heart seemed to be in my mouth every time I heard a drumroll. The cannons on the cordon side began firing at us. In the wake of our advance, men were left screaming where they fell. And the cannonballs whistling by, and you not knowing if yours would be the next head to be pulped by one.

Military discipline and civilian brotherliness will always be very different things. A well-trained soldier will advance, advance no matter what, even in the face of an iron tempest. For the Coronela militia, it was different. Each man would look left and right and see alongside him a parent, a son, or a brother: three generations advancing shoulder to shoulder. When one had his leg blown off, or another fell to the floor with half his head gone, those alongside him would always kneel down and try to help. It was my unhappy task to push them on. “On, on!” I cried. “Don’t stop, leave it to the surgeons!”

What they failed to understand was that, by stopping, they were loosening the formation. Distraught, they’d stop and crouch down, and the line behind them would have to break to go around them. It was pointless shouting at them: They couldn’t hear. And so the formation began falling apart.

I couldn’t have been happier to hear the trumpets sounding the retreat. I had only one thought: We’re done, let’s get away! Until that moment, I’d kept step with the pace of the advance. But as I turned and tried to hurry home, I realized my left leg wasn’t working.

My whole leg was covered in blood. As is so often the case, the heat of battle had meant I hadn’t felt the pain. The bullet had gone clean through my thigh. The entry and exit wounds were visible in spite of the blood pumping out. The troops were heading back into the city, and I stayed where I was, flapping like a lame duck, letting out ridiculous sobs and groans. For Ballester, sprinting back to the city, here was his chance to take revenge.

“Now what?” he said. “Think we shouldn’t stop for the wounded? Still think we ought to leave them where they lie?”

I ought to have begged for his help but instead opted for a few choice words about the gash he was born out of. A few more cannonballs landed around us, and the rest of our men made themselves scarce. What a calamity, that retreat! Some even tossed their rifles to the ground to help run faster; their only thought was reaching the cover of our cannons, where the enemy cavalry wouldn’t dare follow.

By now, Bourbon riders had reached the point where our advance had ceased. There was no chance I was going to make it back to the city gates, not even to the palisades. I dropped into a hollow in the ground, facedown, playing dead. With a little luck, I’d be able to wait for nightfall and then slink back to the city.

Well, fortune wasn’t favoring me that day. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two Bourbon soldiers come up alongside the natural trench I was lying in. They were going around impaling bodies with their bayonets to make sure they were dead, and I was next.

“Arretez!” I shouted, rolling over to face them. “I’m a lieutenant colonel in His Majesty Carlos III’s army. Take me to your commander, and you’ll be rewarded.”

I could barely believe it, seeing the barriers to the Bourbon cordon swing shut behind me. I’d breakfasted in my home that morning, and now, just a few hours later, here I was in the enemy camp, a wound in my leg and two enemy soldiers keeping me captive.

There were few prisoners aside from me — which just goes to show that short, frightened legs are better than long, injured ones. The cordon had been refined and reinforced since the beginning of the siege, I noticed.

My captors weren’t overly discourteous. Pleased with their find, they were leading me to one of their superiors when we came past a surly-looking French captain. Seeing me, he let loose a few insults against the city and said what he thought should happen to the Barcelona “rebels.”

I shrugged. “We’ll be dining in Paris before that day comes,” I said in French.

I was merely referring to a rumor that had been making the rounds in the city: Catalan diplomats were said to be brokering a truce with the French. This captain, though, took me to mean something else altogether; it seemed he thought good old Zuvi was planning on invading France on his own, or somesuch. He snatched the rifle from one of the soldiers guarding me, and rammed the butt into my kidneys. I fell, letting out a helpless cry. What was he about? I looked him in the eye.

He was resolved to kill me: The look on his face stated this clearly. He might simply have been a madman, or perhaps it was the yearlong siege that had turned him into this bitter brute. I couldn’t say. But he began aiming the rifle butt, accurately and extremely painfully, at my ribs. I tried dragging myself out from under this barrage, and I cried out for help, but where to find help in an enemy encampment? It was more a harpooning than a beating. One blow to the base of my spine made my sight swim with yellow dots. He was going to kill me. I tried crawling away and got a kick to the head for my troubles.

I began not to feel the pain. I got to my knees, straightening up my body. Something wooden struck me between my shoulder blades, and I fell to the floor again. Just then, however, I caught a brief glimpse of someone.

On the cordon wall, a man standing on the highest tier, looking out over the city and the now deserted battlefield with a telescope.

I recognized the shape and size of the man. The expression, not so much venial as great: a pose that suggested solemnity in the face of trivialities, a silhouette with an invincible aura. “Martí,” I said, “it cannot be. This man is dead.” I straightened up again, still on my knees. Delirious or not, I would lose nothing by calling out to him. I held out my hand and cried: “Monsieur de Vauban!”

Without dropping the telescope, the man slowly turned his head.

“C’est moi! Votre élève bien aimé de Bazoches!”

He looked down at me, frowning. “C’est qui?” he asked.

“Moi!” I replied, more a spit than a shout. “Martín Zuviría!”

“Martín? C’est toi?”

His penetrating look gave way to astonishment. He descended the tiers and came toward me. A look was enough to send the captain packing. When he knelt down beside me, my vision had begun going blurry, all color gone.

He hesitated. Discreetly, I upturned my wrist and bared my forearm for him to see my Points.

Grabbing hold of his lapel, I said: “Maréchal, quelle est la Parole? Dites-moi! S’il vous plaît, la Parole.”

It wasn’t the marquis, of course, but, rather, his cousin, Dupuy, whom, if you remember, I met on one of his visits to Bazoches. The one who that day made reference to a “clause” preventing me from ever facing him in battle. Yes, isn’t life just like that. And my confusion wasn’t at all strange — the family resemblance was strong, even down to the way they carried themselves.

He took me to his tent and gave me some hot wine. He then had his private surgeon come and see to the bullet wound in my leg.

“The wound is clean,” said Dupuy. “The bullet has only punctured the thigh flesh. If it had hit the artery, you’d be dead by now.”

I rolled up my sleeve. I wanted to tell him about my Points once more, as the first time he’d been able to see only the ones nearest to my wrist.

“Four,” I said, preempting him. “The fifth hasn’t been validated.”

Dupuy was a very eminent man. “Yes, I thought as much,” he said. “Don’t forget, though: Whether or not it’s been validated, the tattoo is still there. And you must show that you deserve it.”

I changed the subject. What news?

“Marshal Berwick is yet to arrive,” he explained. “I was traveling with him, but what with the artillery train, and Miquelets constantly ambushing us, progress was so slow that he asked me to come ahead. He wants me to weigh up the situation. And from what I can tell, this siege has been managed badly, very badly. All the men are on edge. As your treatment shows very well.”

I was about to speak, but he put a finger to his lips. “Listen: I’m not in a position to help you as I’d like, unfortunately. You’re outside of what I can control; the siege is still being run by the Spanish. You know how thin-skinned they are. You’re a lieutenant colonel, and you’re their prisoner; I can’t just take you off them.”

Again I was going to say something, but Dupuy made me be quiet. “Shut up and listen! This is how it’s going to go: They’ll interrogate you, but they won’t be too rough. Yes, yes, I know we’re at war, all courtesy’s gone out the window, and torture’s become de rigueur. Don’t worry, though, I’ve found someone. He serves King Philip, but he’s one of ours. You’ll be interrogated, but not roughly. A few days with our man, then you’ll be under me.”

“Who is this individual?” I asked. “French or Spanish?”

He smiled, pointing at the entrance to the tent. “The first person to come through there and use sign language with you. Whoever that is.” Before leaving, he asked me, “Martí, do you mind telling me what you were doing inside a city besieged by the king’s forces?”

His look was as withering as that of a Ten Points. Neither did I want to lie, nor could I have lied. I was both honest and concise. “I was working as an engineer,” I said.

His reaction was that of someone with more Points than I. “I see,” he said simply, and left the tent.

I had reason to fear what was coming to me next. So much had changed in such a short space of time that I couldn’t get my thoughts in order. The only people who came into the recently erected tent were Dupuy’s legion of servants, bringing in furniture, and one French officer who came hoping to pay his respects to the cousin of the great Vauban. And me in the field bed in one corner, bandaged up and unable to move. I carefully watched everyone who came in, waiting for someone to address me with the sign language of engineers. Nothing.

Midway through the afternoon, four Spanish soldiers came in, sent by a captain. They made me go with them in spite of my protests. Their bearing didn’t seem particularly soldierly, which is to say they seemed very slovenly, and everything they did seemed strained, as happens with men unwillingly obeying orders. As they dragged me through camp, they kept glancing from side to side, as though afraid someone else would step in and stop them.

The unfortunate houses on the site of the Bourbon camp had been turned into stores or residences for the high command. They took me into one of the latter. We climbed some steps up to the first floor, and I was locked in a room containing an old table and two shabby-looking chairs. A fine layer of dust covered the floor and furniture. The panes in the single window were smashed. The Bourbon camp was the sack, and this tiny room a sack within the sack. Jonah in the belly of the whale? He had nothing on me then!

“Our man”—in the words of the innocent Dupuy — appeared half an hour later. I saw what had happened. Dupuy, just arrived at the Bourbon encampment, was met by a Points Bearer who showed himself to be compliant and polite. In the belief that the sacred fidelities of Bazoches were still in effect in the world, Dupuy had placed full confidence in the man.

“Our man” came in and immediately reprimanded the soldiers he had with him. Why hadn’t his guest, the honorable enemy, been given drink and plenty of food? But with his hands, in our sign language, he said to me: “I’ve got you, you swine.”

“Our man” was none other than Joris Prosperus van Verboom, the Antwerp butcher.

6

When everything was over, after Barcelona had fallen and the war was drawing to its close, Verboom was given some very cushy sinecures indeed by Philip V. He stayed on in Catalonia. Barcelona — defeated, flattened, bloodied — remained a source of unease to the Bourbons. There is a form of submission more absolute than death: endless slavery. Little Philip gave the task to Verboom.

I’m going to include two very rough sketches of the city — if my hairy hippopotamus manages not to lose them, that is. The first one you’ve already seen; it’s of old Barcelona as it was immediately before the siege.

And in this next one, you can see what Verboom did to it.

The star that’s been added on, the Citadel, was the work of Verboom. Yes, the Citadel. He leveled a fifth of the city for building materials. A perfect bastioned enclosure, there not for the people’s protection but from which to control, subdue, and, if necessary, fire cannons on them. An urban tumor that converted Barcelonans into prisoners in their own city.

But what am I doing talking about what happened after the siege? Held captive behind enemy lines, in the hands of my enemy, I had quite enough on my plate.

My usual quick thinking had deserted me. My only way out was to get in touch with Dupuy. Impossible: Verboom stood in my way; a man capable of plotting my kidnap must have been sufficiently foresighted to hide that fact. Most likely, he was going to kill me there and then. And later, he’d allege that I’d tried to get away, and say to Dupuy that some imbecile soldier had shot me by mistake — anything. Shit.

Verboom had arrived in the night, like a sea mist, or like deathly fevers. I’d managed to make myself a weapon, a knife fashioned out of some wood I’d pulled off the window frame and, for the blade, a shard of glass thrust into it. If worse came to worst, before they tried to kill me, I’d try to take his eye out.

However, I quickly saw that the situation was not as I had imagined. The Antwerp butcher brought one servant soldier with him, and his only weapons were a tray, a bottle, and two glasses. The servant put these down on the table and went out. When Verboom and I were alone, I erupted in indignation. “How dare you lock me up! I defect, I offer my services to King Philip, and this is my reward. You can’t imagine what I’ve been through, coerced by those rebels to take part in their deluded attempts to defend their city!”

Verboom’s only response to my theatrics was to take a seat, pour wine into the two glasses, and say: “Drink.”

I refused. He could have been planning to poison me, to save himself from having to do something violent and then for Dupuy to find out.

“Come now, don’t be ridiculous,” he said, grimacing. “Think I’d go so low? This is good port — using it as rat poison would be a waste.”

He took my glass and drained it in one go. But it would take more than that to win my trust. The silence was eventually broken by the rumbling of cannons starting up outside. The walls shook, and chalk dust fell across the table. Intuitively, Verboom put a hand over his glass, glancing up, which actually convinced me: No one tries to preserve a drink with poison in it. I poured myself some more port and felt it strip my throat. What was Verboom up to? He wasn’t exactly getting to the point.

Jimmy was going to arrive within a matter of days. The person whose Attack Trench design ended up being used to take Barcelona would gain a large share of the praise. When he was released in 1712, Verboom made a plan for a future siege of the city. But Jimmy had sent Dupuy ahead to design another trench. Dupuy was a Seven Points. Jimmy was very likely, in any case, to use the trench of a Vauban family member, which would make all the butcher’s efforts for naught. Goodbye, glory, goodbye, rewards!

In a nutshell: Verboom was hoping I’d correct, refine, and improve the trench he’d been planning. I was a Five Points — well, sort of — and had the advantage over Dupuy of having been inside the city and therefore knowing what state the defenses were in.

In spite of my situation, I burst out laughing. Did he really think I was going to help him?

“You’re the reason I spent two years locked up,” he said. “Two long years.”

At this point, his hate for me became more than palpable. Everything about Verboom was large: his body, his head, his teeth, like those of a hippo. I gulped, suddenly very afraid. He paused, letting me savor his intimidating force. I was under lock and key, and I was alone; he could do with me as he pleased. And we are all what we are; Saint Jordi killed the dragon as easily as crushing a cockroach, Roger de Llúria brushed aside a hundred thousand Turks over the course of three breakfasts, and King Jaume took Mallorca and Valencia just because he felt bored with his palaces in Barcelona. But as it turned out, Longlegs Zuvi wasn’t Saint Jordi, or Roger de Llúria, or King Jaume. I was simply very, very afraid.

“I did nothing to you. Nothing!” he bellowed. “One day I was at Bazoches castle, courting a lady, and a muddy gardener crossed my path. What have I got against gardeners? Nothing. But that day in 1706, I was slandered — vile slander — and four years later, in 1710, I was captured — again, vilely — and now, another four years on, here’s this vile gardener again. Except this time, there’s nothing to stop me ridding myself of you. Nothing!” He wagged a finger at me. “And yet there is a small possibility I might let you off. If you do as I tell you, I’ll merely exile you to the island of Cabrera or some such godforsaken spot.”

He left me alone to think about it. He left the drawings for the trench he’d designed, along with some scraps containing the technical details. I didn’t bother looking at them. A prisoner has obligations, and he has rights, which add together to form the only thing he must do: escape.

I looked out of the smashed window. Jumping from the first storey wouldn’t kill me. A broken ankle for my freedom seemed like a good exchange. There were two soldiers on guard down there, of course. I didn’t need to get back to the city, though — that would be impossible — but simply to get hold of Dupuy.

Using that spring sun, the papers on the table, and a bit of the windowpane as a magnifying glass, I could start a fire. Confusion. Guards are always more indulgent if it’s a fire an escapee is fleeing. They’d be unsure, even if for a second, whether to help or arrest me. I’d have time to shout at the top of my lungs. Sound carries around a military encampment even more than in echoey mountains, and my strange tidings surely would reach Dupuy. Once Dupuy knew what was happening, Verboom would think twice about killing me. After that, time would tell.

I picked up one of the pieces of paper with Verboom’s notes on it, and supported myself against the window frame, waiting for the morning rays to begin pouring in. The black of the ink would go up before the white of the paper. I’d direct the light with a piece of concave glass. Before my eyes, some fragment of Verboom’s instructions.

It’s strange the things you remember — such as what happened to be on that piece of paper:

. . on the left side G, and if time permits, we construct the return H and the redoubt I, and build the battery K of 10 cannons for the mills L, and the bridge at the new port on side M, and whatever we can of the defenses of the bastion of Sainte Claire and of the old wall which encloses it. This manoeuvre will require 1,000 armed men and then. .

I turned my head. The map was there on the table. For a moment, I put off my plan to set the place on fire. Once an engineer, always an engineer. I was magnetized by the map. I began examining it.

It was a representation of Barcelona, with its city center and battered walls. And, on the fields around, the zigzagging trench planned by Verboom. The numbers and initials marked on the map had their key in the notes. I had planned a quick glance but ended up sitting down and studying it closely, cross-checking it with the notes.

I scrutinized Verboom’s trench, the instructions for how it should be carried out. I went back to the map. And again.

This wasn’t much of a trench. Truly, it wasn’t. The sheer weight of Bourbon numbers meant, somehow or other, they were bound to reach the ramparts. With huge losses, yes, but what did that matter? None of this would figure in the end: The point was that Dupuy’s design would be better, far better, and Jimmy would opt for that one.

Then something happened. One thought led to another: If that was so obviously the way things were going to turn out, wasn’t it my duty to intervene? When the Dutch butcher came back, there was good old Zuvi, sitting and reading over his notes.

“Well?” he said.

“Do you want my opinion or not?” Picking up the sheets of paper, I tore them in half and threw them scornfully on the floor. “Des ordures.” Before he could become animated, I added: “The problem is not so much the design as the whole basis of your approach.”

We argued it over. I, being the superior engineer, prevailed.

Verboom perspired easily. My disquisitions had made him sweatier still. The beads on his upper lip, in particular, made me feel sick. In summary, I said: “Look, I’ve had a think about what you said, and perhaps you’re right: Our issues with each other are based on an old misunderstanding. Let’s change the agreement: Don’t exile me, promote me, and in exchange, I’ll work loyally on your behalf.”

“Loyalty?” he said skeptically. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“You need to design another Attack Trench. And who’s going to do a better job than me? We need to start from the beginning.”

“Your debt with me,” he said, “can’t just be wiped clean.”

“Even you, who hates me, would find it hard to have me executed when I hand over the plan for this new Attack Trench.”

I could see exactly what he was thinking, as though his skull were made of glass: It’s so close I can almost touch it! What have I got to lose?

“Ink and paper,” I said. “A compass, set squares. That’s what I need. And a night to work on it.”

It ended up being not one night but two, plus three entire days, shut up in that shabby little room. I didn’t even have a chance to shave. The artillery fire made the air in the room constantly thick with floating dust.

I worked harder on that Attack Trench than I ever had on anything, pushing my being to its very limit. Believe me when I say the brain is the most tiring muscle to use. Never, ever, not before then or since, have good old Zuvi’s talents been tested so hard. I felt like an architect stubbornly trying to turn a decaying shack into something Rome would bless as a cathedral. My quill attacked the inkwell as I made use of my Bazoches faculties, and every line said to me I’d been born for such a task; all the hours under Vauban’s tutelage would be justified in these damned plans. “The optimum defense” had been Vauban’s question. And perhaps — time would tell — here was the answer: “The optimum defense consists of an Attack Trench.”. . Because, as you might have guessed, I poured all my effort into jeopardizing, obstructing, and generally making the task of the Bourbon army impossible; to shaft the lot of them, from the wheels of their cannons to the toes of their press-ganged soldiers. My design had to seem brilliant on paper and be a disaster once executed. Verboom was a swine but no fool. He’d pick up on bad faith and obvious defects. So I wrought a very lovely lie, false but seductive, featuring elements that were genuine but, underneath, doomed to fail. It had to be sabotage, while seeming to better whatever Dupuy was going to come up with. To better Dupuy! And with Jimmy’s scrutiny to contend with as well! The very thought made my head spin.

Whatever happened, a trench was going to reach Barcelona’s ramparts. They had more than enough men, whom their tyrant leader looked upon as nothing but cannon fodder. But a defective trench would delay them, possibly add a week or two to proceedings. And in such a time, this trifling universe of ours could turn fully on its axis. Who was to say? The king of one nation might die, or the queen of another; alliances might change; anything.

Verboom, who went from impatient to extremely impatient, kept coming into the room. “Done yet? Berwick’s not far away. Hurry!”

I dragged the table over to the window and the steep, defined shaft of sunlight. Thousands of dust motes floated around, reminding me of jellyfish in crosscurrents. Come the third morning, I felt like my tired, stinging eyes were on the cusp of melting.

Verboom came in, slamming the door behind him and giving me a murderous glance. He’d run out of patience.

“This might settle our account,” I said before he could speak.

“Some job you must have done for it to be worth a man’s life,” he said, flattening out the plan on the table. “Especially yours.”

He took a long time looking over the plans, and was expressionless throughout. He read the notes, went back to the map. The eternal inspection. I had no way of knowing what his little grunts and groans meant.

In the end, I couldn’t contain myself. “Hopeful about our future trench?”

He didn’t answer, as though I weren’t there. He peered closely at the map, running a finger over it. Without deigning to look at me, he said: “What do you think?” He finally looked up, facing me. “If I weren’t, you’d be dead already.”

We spent the whole of the following day together, refining the plans. I was worn out; he oozed energy. He had a rough and limitless sort of strength. And my enemy was no dimwit, I’ll give him that. During those twenty-four hours, his attention didn’t stray from the table for one moment. My God, I thought, doesn’t he need to piss, to sleep, does he never eat? A bit of rusk cake and a bottle of port, and I could imagine him traversing whole deserts.

He harried me with questions. “Too close,” he said at one point. “You’ve got the first parallel starting far too close to the city. The day the work starts, the troops will be at risk of being fired on and destroyed.”

“Do you want Berwick to back this? Then give him want he wants. The closer we start, the less time we’ll need to reach the walls. Berwick won’t be able to resist.”

“The three parallels, and the channels between them, they’re so wide,” he objected. “Why? Digging out that much earth means more effort than is needed, and that way you lose time.”

“The width of the trench walls needs to be proportional to that of the defenders’ walls,” I argued. “For the attack itself, we’ll need considerable numbers. Where are you hoping the shock troops will go? And how do you expect soldiers and sappers to circulate in such thin channels? The traffic of men and matériel will all be bumping into each other. In trying to save time, you’ll waste it.”

“You’ve also aimed the trench much farther to the left,” he said, “closer to the sea.”

“The land in that area, if you remember, abounds with dykes and small streams. They’ll be dry in the summer. The men digging will be able to use the riverbeds that run parallel to the walls. They’ll only have to work the trench a little deeper than the ones naturally there from the watercourses.”

I’d done a good job in one sense: An enemy is harder to kill at close quarters. That twenty-four hours sharing such a small space, and the sham solidarity — but solidarity after all — had given me a glimpse of the man. He had a habit of scratching his fleshy cheeks with his ring finger, when it’s so much more usual for people to use their forefinger. Verboom ceased to be my mortal enemy and turned into a middle-aged man with a distinguishing characteristic: He scratched his face with his ring finger. Our shared enterprise generated something akin to camaraderie. You don’t wish your fellow oarsman dead — at least not until you’ve reached the shore.

Is it possible to honor one’s enemy? I began to question everything. What if, after all, the evil was not in him but in me? There was no way for me to contradict his account of our hostilities. In reality, what ill had Verboom done me? He had been showing off in front of a lady one day when a muddy “gardener” had launched into him. Anyone in his place would have cursed me, as he had. As we went on with our calculations of barrow loads, and as I kept going with my diversions and approximations, drainage depths, cavalry numbers, angles of counter-escarpments, I worked out that my dislike for Verboom was but a manifestation of my love for Jeanne Vauban. Perhaps I hated him only because that was easier than owning up to the truth: I’d lost Jeanne, and I was solely responsible. This new perspective unsettled me.

Understand my situation. Torn from my home, confined but still using my intellect to fight, in secret and against everyone, including my own side, who by now might consider me a deserter. Jimmy about to arrive, a presence to oppose that of Don Antonio. And The Word, drifting around somewhere in that corrupt, dust-filled atmosphere. The disquiet I underwent in those days made my hate for Verboom falter.

No, it isn’t that, no. I said I’d be sincere, and I will.

I’ll tell you why we hated each other from the moment we set eyes on each other, and why I hated him until I killed him, and why, to this very day, I hate Joris Prosperus van Verboom.

Because! Some things simply are, one doesn’t choose them, full stop. And to hell with Verboom!

End of chapter, damn it all.

Or not? Oh, my blond walrus suggests that it might be good to tie it up. Ah, yes, she says I should recount the rest of what happened that evening. Now you see what’s going on? You’ve become this book’s engineer, and I’ve been reduced to a poor sapper.

Once we’d finished the job, we were both utterly mentally exhausted. Verboom sent for drink. Port was his passion, and it was what relieved him. A bottle of that strong wine, he said, cost fortunes. Since the war had begun, Portugal had traded only with England, meaning his reserves had steadily diminished. And in spite of that, he shared it with me. Perhaps, as I say, after our shared endeavor, it was harder for him to show me bad manners that evening than he’d find it to have me killed the next morning.

As with all men when they drink (apart from Jimmy), our talk turned to women. Well, Verboom’s talk; I said nothing about how much I missed Amelis. During the time Verboom had been confined in Barcelona, the Red Pelts even let him receive visits from high-class courtesans.

“Well, just the one,” he said, as though it were nothing. “A harlot in pay of their magistrates.”

“Ha!” I said. “Just one woman to keep you company! Such an eminent hostage, and subjected to the torment of monotony? Doubtless they wanted to make it like being married for you.”

We were drunk enough by this point for him not to pick up on my sarcasm.

“Oh, but she knew all the tricks, that one. The first thing I plan to do when we enter the city is to have her found. A dark-haired beauty, a bit too thin. I like them with a bit more flesh on. My, could she wiggle those hips, though, and her tongue was a miracle worker.”

“Dark hair?”

“Yes, very dark, her hair, but not her skin,” he clarified, rapping the table with his knuckles. “And a body harder than oak. Although, the little slut, she was also stingy as can be.” He laughed. “She always came wearing the same dress, a violet one. No jewelry, never any new attire whatsoever. Oh, but do you want to know what the most unusual thing about her was?” As he spoke, he glanced around in the manner of a man reminiscing. The port had gone to his head, and he hadn’t noticed me looking at him like an animal. “For a woman, she had quite a brain on her. When I was at my lowest points, it was her, her! who came up with the way out of my hardships. ‘Joris, darling,’ she said, ‘if you want to get out of here, propose an exchange. Suggest they swap you for another big fish, someone at your level. Like that general, say, Villarroel, the one the Bourbons have captured. The only reason it hasn’t happened is because no one’s had the idea. Him to Barcelona, you to Madrid. Everyone happy.’ ” Verboom shook his big head in admiration, like a dog shaking water from its fur. “I just hadn’t imagined it would be so easy. I made exactly that suggestion. And here I am.”

How can I possibly begin to describe the pain? It was more than I could bear. The way he’d recounted the intimacy of her “Joris, darling. . ” We were drinking from clay cups. I didn’t realize I was crushing mine in my hand. Suddenly, it shattered into pieces, making a noise like a cracked nut.

This brought Verboom out of his drunken stupor. Looking at me, he saw it in my face. At which his lit up. “No,” he said, “it can’t be.”

I’m ninety-eight years old. And I could live to a thousand and ninety-eight, and still the way he laughed in that moment would resound in my ears as though it were yesterday.

7

Have any of you ever been dead? I have, several times. And such a benign state it is, such a pleasure to be in, that I can well understand why no one comes back from there. Death only kills desires and obligations. And without desires or obligations, why come back to the trifling circumference of this universe of ours?

To recap: Good old Zuvi behind the Bourbon cordon, locked in a room empty except for the dust, my design for the Attack Trench complete. Cannon fire resounding without, monotone and impersonal, as though it were le Mystère itself being racked with laughter. Since I had completed my task, the following dawn was surely to be my last. Verboom consulted me on a last few details, shamelessly scribbling down all my answers. Rubbing his tired eyes, he stowed the notes in a file and then let out a little cry in Dutch.

In came two heavies broader across their backs than I am long of leg. The Antwerp butcher stuffed the sheets of paper into the folder. And as he did so, he coolly leaned his head closer to me.

This small gesture said it all. They were going to kill me there and then. Doubtless they were mercenaries, private thugs hired by Verboom. Four massive hands lifted me up under my arms.

“Wait a moment!” I screeched.

Never has my mind whirred into action so quickly. I elbowed my way out of their grips and forced myself back into my seat. Then, extending a hand across the map, I said in a miserable, pleading tone: “Monseigneur! Et les moulins?”

“What mills?”

“We still haven’t finished planning the attack on Section L here. The rebels will turn these mills into redoubts.”

Verboom blinked. “Ah, yes,” he said, “the mills in Section L. We were going to come back to them and forgot. Well, they aren’t especially important. The attack won’t go very near them.”

Though what I heard him saying was: “No, we won’t defer your execution.” The two mercenaries stood there like hunting dogs straining at their chains. They lifted me out of my seat again. Then I came up with a tall story about the mills: An anonymous genius had come up with a curious system for concealing artillery, I said. The windows in the mills were going to be made into gunwales, and medium-caliber cannons placed inside — inconspicuously, the barrels not sticking out. They weren’t windmills, but the idea was to put sails on them like a windmill, and these, turning in the wind in time with the cannon fire, would serve to disperse the gunpowder smoke. The enemy would take a good long while working out where the deadly shots were coming from.

“How original!” exclaimed Verboom, obviously planning to use the idea himself one day. He made a few notes and, thinking out loud, asked: “Do you know the mad genius who had the idea? Perhaps, when we take the city, I’ll have him spared and offer him the chance to serve under me.” Verboom wasn’t the most intelligent of men. But then, swiveling his big head all of a sudden, he looked on me with renewed spite. His own words had led him to the answer. “It was you, of course,” he said.

That was the last straw. Well, you can’t survive forever, hopping from frying pan to frying pan. Verboom gave the order for me to be taken out, and this time the two giants got a good hold of me.

I had no way of knowing, but my fate had been decided several days earlier. A number of spies who had been caught in Barcelona had been hanged outside the walls as an example. The Bourbons decided to carry out reprisals by hanging prisoners along the cordon. Verboom had my name included in the list. In fact, when I arrived, there was only one noose left, on a fifteen-foot L-shaped stage just behind the edge of the cordon.

There was an uproariousness to this mass execution that didn’t seem much suited to the meting out of justice. The sight of the hanged men on the city walls had stirred the troops, and the officers were having trouble containing them. I was jostled and shoved through a sea of arms; if not for my thug escorts, I wouldn’t have made it as far as the scaffold. My hands were tied behind my back, the noose was dropped down over my head, and the rope was attached to a wooden contraption designed for hoisting infantry out of the trench.

I could see everything from up there. Everything. A westerly wind was blowing the smoke out to sea. My eyes, free from the dust haze of the previous days, scanned the front.

The cordon, the Bourbon cannons. On that day, their gunners seemed subdued in their work, as though Pópuli’s imminent departure had somehow lulled them. Men scurried antlike along the channels that ran from the cordon to the Capuchin convent, arms full of munitions. From the city, Costa’s missiles came in a measure rather than a torrential fashion.

The Two Crowns’ positions were visible, too, and ours I knew from memory. I was certain that the men of the Coronela were behind every rampart face and manning every bastion. In each of the bell towers nearest to the ramparts, pairs of observers. Repair brigades would be emptying detritus from the moat, shielded by welded-together doors.

The land between the two sides, apparently unpeopled, seethed with secret armies. All the ruined houses, fought over a thousand times, had patrols from both armies hiding inside. I could sense our snipers nestled in rifts and crevices. Thus, at once I saw the hunter and the prey, the reckless foragers and the snipers stalking them. Beyond the palisade, the battered city walls, and beyond them the outline of the city, with dozens of bell towers pointing upward like needles. And beneath it all, our Mediterranean, ever indifferent to the agonies of men. The city put me in mind of a moribund body, which, though going into its death pangs, continually formed new patches of scar tissue.

There is something irremissable about the contact of a noose against one’s neck. My final thoughts, little as I like to admit it, were empty, emotionless technicalities. Costa needs to alter his range, I thought. A number of soldiers heaved on the wooden contraption. I felt my feet lift off the platform.

The beauty of this world is hidden from us until the moment we feel disconnected from it. In my final vision of things, all was well, beauteous, in order. There was even orderliness to the destruction of the ramparts, the breaches perfect, like silk cocoons. Infinity resides in every instant, every instant is in itself abundant. How wrong ever to think otherwise! My final thought was: How lovely a siege is. Then, as I was deprived of air, delirium overcame me.

I heard a noise. This: “Wake up. That’s an order.”

I opened my eyes.

It was Jimmy. He peered at me from very close up. I could even smell the perfume on his wig.

There before me, the Jimmy I knew: he and his conceited self-satisfaction, his little courtier laugh, proud as a peacock. He had a small retinue. Seeing me wake, he turned to them in triumph, twirling his hand affectedly, as if to say: See? I did it. He’s back to life.

Forgive the digression. I was in a hospital tent for Bourbon officers. Thick bandages swaddled my neck. Most of the beds were empty, but we weren’t alone. At the far end, on a rickety field bed, there was a Spanish captain going through death pangs, his wounds too atrocious to be hidden with bandages. He exhaled a musical-sounding death rattle. Jimmy paid him not the slightest attention. He ordered his retinue to leave.

“You’re a lucky bird,” he said when it was just the two of us and the dying man. “I show up, come to inspect the position, and there I see you, dangling from the scaffold with your cock erect. Another second and even I wouldn’t have been able to save you. Can you speak?”

I shook my head.

“Little wonder. Much longer and the noose would have pulled your head clean off your body. Was it Verboom’s doing?”

I nodded. Removing his gloves and placing them on the table next to us, Jimmy shook his head in mock astonishment. “Well, well. You two been getting on that well?”

I responded with a bras d’honneur, though a not very energetic one, given my state. Jimmy’s face clouded over in thought. He sat down beside me on the bed. A few breaths. Then he patted the inside of my calf. “I’ve got a lot of work to do. While you recover, I’ll decide whether I ought to enlist you or put you back up on that scaffold. Now sleep.”

On my third day of confinement in the field hospital, they came to get me. Jimmy had installed himself in a place called Mas Guinardó, a large country house situated within the Bourbon cordon. Some English mercenaries, doubtless Jimmy’s own domestic staff, took me there, and they tossed me into the house like a fish into a barrel.

Jimmy wasn’t there; my only company, a couple of servants. A strange, ambiguous state to be in: guest and prisoner. I had no orders, nor could I give any, so I simply roamed the premises. The study was overflowing with a clutter of documents and papers. And, on the table in there, a missive from Little Philip.

Let a cat loose in your house, and it’s going to have a sniff around. Jimmy knew that, so I felt sure he’d left the letter knowing I’d read it. It contained the directives for the final attack.

Sure, as I am, of Barcelona’s imminent surrender, I have adjudged it convenient to communicate to you my intentions with regards the matter. As it stands, there can be no doubt, the rebels wage war upon us. Any grace afforded them will be out of the piousness and compassion of my heart, and thus, should they, repenting of their errors, beg for our mercy before the trench is embarked upon, you will not cede it them immediately, but then listen to what they have to say. You will make them aware of the seriousness of their rebellion and how undeserving they are of our mercy. You will make them believe they have hope, by offering to intercede with me on their behalf, and by saying that you will ask for their lives to be spared, though that is the only grace you will ask, and only for the high command. If they fail to understand this and allow the trench to be begun, in that case you will not listen to any offer of capitulation except one of outright surrender. If they continue to resist, and it should come to the final assault, in that case they will no longer be deserving, as I’m sure you see, of the slightest compassion, and must accept the final severities of war. Whichever Spanish officers make it into the city shall then be their masters.

Mother of God. If this was the fate they had planned for the officers, what would they do with the rest of the inhabitants?

Jimmy came in unannounced, so utterly aloof that he didn’t even deign to reprimand me for snooping.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll keep this brief. I’m busy.”

Always the same impatient movements, even when he was relaxing. He grabbed an apple from a tray, took a seat in a padded armchair, and began chewing the apple. In private, he had the manners of a child, one leg dangling over the arm of the chair, tipping his head back as he ate.

“You’re being paid a pittance by the rebels,” he went on. “So you aren’t fighting on their side for the money. Nor out of ambition, given how obvious it is that the battle’s lost. Tell me: Is there someone inside the city you’re being loyal to?”

“Yes,” I said. My voice sounded like something being scraped against chalk. But at least it had come back.

“Man or woman?” he asked.

“A child.”

He tossed the apple behind him. “Dear God, a child. Every time we meet, you’ve developed some new perversion.”

“And a woman, and an old man, and a dwarf,” I said seriously, somewhat ferociously.

“A dwarf — I don’t think I can imagine. .” Then, changing tone, he said: “This is what you get for deserting me. If you’d stayed with me after Almansa, you wouldn’t be in this pickle. First I honor you and give you the chance to accompany me, which you reject, and now I save your life. Any chance of a thank-you?”

“No,” I said.

“Going to help me crush the rebel scum?”

“No.”

He laughed. “I like this, knowing your position. Now I can start my Attack Trench. Let’s go back to the beginning. I’ve done my homework. It seems that in Tortosa, you were the only engineer to act like one. I knew it the moment I laid eyes on you. ‘This lad’s mind,’ I said, ‘is worth as much attention as his lovely legs.’ I can make double use of you.” He laughed at his own joke before adding: “Going to ask to serve under me again?”

I said nothing.

“Good, wonderful, we’re making progress,” he said. “People who don’t know their worth, I tend to get for cheap.” He stood and began pacing the room, hands clasped behind his back. He began speaking quickly. “The child, the woman, the old man. I’ll promise to get them out of this condemned city alive. Oh, and the dwarf too, let’s not forget him. Their kind are wonderfully useful — they don’t even have to get on their knees in order to suck you. Plus ten thousand pounds. What am I saying? Five thousand and be grateful. Annually and for life, that is, naturally. And some title or other. And a house, why not? From what I’ve seen, this country has been so ravaged, there will be empty mansions and seigneuries aplenty.” He sat down in another armchair, his chin on his hand. He regarded me as if I were some strange insect. “Although. . come to think of it, I’m going to increase the offer. This mansion, I’ll give it to you, but it won’t be your primary abode. You’ll install your woman there, the dwarf, the whole coterie. You’ll visit from time to time. A bit of rumpy-pumpy with her, everyone’s happy, and you can go back to your real home.” Then he adopted a vague tone, as though what he was saying now was of no importance. He’d known from the beginning what he was going to say, of course. “I’ve had word from Bazoches. They say Jeanne Vauban isn’t all that happy. You know her, do you not? I think so. Her husband has succumbed to insanity once more.” He let out a cruel laugh. “He now thinks the philosopher’s stone is hidden up his wife’s cunt; tried taking it out with a royal scalpel. You know, that long hooked implement the surgeons use to remove anal tumors? Thank the Lord the servants stopped him in time! He’s been locked up. The marriage is on its way to being annulled.” He smacked his lips. “So sad! A woman that beautiful, so alone in the world!” Then he turned serious again. “It’s my belief that you would be a good candidate for turning the castle at Bazoches into an academy for engineers. I also have a hunch you’d be welcomed as the man to run it.”

I looked at him with disgust. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The one who doesn’t know is you, you fool!” he exclaimed, becoming angry. “For instance, did you know that Jeanne is a mother? A boy, six years old. And by my calculations, at the time of the conception, the husband was away in Paris.” His tone changed once more. “You know these French aristocrats. Horrid husband off elsewhere, and they get their hands on some stable boy for riding lessons. Oh, yes, they call it love sometimes. Sad thing is, ladies don’t marry stable boys. Now, though, a nobleman, even a newly minted one, would be perfectly acceptable. And I am certain you’d be a good father to the boy. What do you think?”

Jimmy had the rare talent of making the future seem real. I suppose because of his position. It isn’t the same fantasizing and boasting in a tavern as it is in a palace. This was Jimmy, the world at his feet. When people like him promised something, it was because they actually had it, and in abundance. Jeanne. The mere mention of her name seemed to bring her within my reach. For me, unreachable; for him, a mere trifle.

“And all in exchange for what?” he said. “Next to nothing. First: When I say so, you will drop everything, wherever you are, to come and be at my side. Even if we’re at the opposite ends of Europe. Two: I’m going to give you an order tomorrow. An order you will carry out diligently and to the best of your abilities.”

I hesitated. “What order?”

He took my show of interest to mean I’d given in. “I’ll let you know my orders when I choose to, not when you ask me to. Do you submit? Yes or no?”

I hung my head, thinking of Jeanne, thinking of Amelis. Thinking of Anfán, and of a son of my own, a stranger but flesh and blood. This was Jimmy. Mentioning Jeanne had brought her back to life, as he’d done with me. To return to Bazoches. The thought alone unhinged me. No one but Jimmy could think up such a painful, empty-hearted storm. If I swallowed the bait, I’d become the things I hated most in the world: a Bourbon and an aristocrat. If not, my son was set to become one anyway. Only Jimmy had the power to make you feel like an échauguette during a bombardment.

“Merde!” he said, losing patience. “Answer! I don’t have all day.”

Jeanne — did I love her? Wrong question: Did I love her enough to forget about Amelis, our little home at the top of that building in the Ribera barrio, just behind the Saint Clara bastion? No, that wasn’t it, either.

“If you keep your promise,” I said, “I’ll keep mine.”

He gave me an unhurried look. He observed my brow, the tear in my eye. He examined the angle of my lips as though they were those of a bastion to be bombarded. “Good. . Good. . ”

I could tell he was happy with the way the questioning had gone, because now I saw his body relax.

“And I can see you aren’t lying.”

Once Pópuli had left, Jimmy inspected the cordon. Good old Zuvi went with him, along with Jimmy’s customary English bodyguards, his four black dogs, and a couple of scribblers to note down the great man’s words for posterity.

Jimmy stopped at the best-disposed redoubts, observing the defenses with his telescope, finished in a matte black to prevent reflections from the sun, which draw the eye of snipers. He knew what he was doing: Each of his questions was something technical and very much to the point.

“Only interested in the bastions?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” he said, lowering the telescope and looking at me.

“You’re an aesthete. Look farther on.”

He brought the telescope back up to his eye. “Mon Dieu, c’est vrai!” he exclaimed. “Quelle belle ville!”

“More so before the bombardment.”

He laughed. “None of which makes me any less hungry. Let’s have dinner.”

As we made our way back to the Guinardó house, Jimmy ruminated aloud to his retinue. “Verily, the king of Spain is the perfect dunderhead. Why destroy a domain this rich? Why do damage to his own interests? Rents, seaports, workshops, and all that commerce paying in to the royal pot. And his warmongering ministers, demanding I raze the entire city and erect a victory statue in the center.”

Be in no doubt, Jimmy cared not a jot about the future of the city. He believed what he was saying, so his thinking out loud was merely to exonerate himself should the thing descend into a bloodbath. The Spanish question, in his eyes, was nonsense, a rivalry that would never end and was better not to get involved in. His dogs accompanied him everywhere: four black bitches, large as foals, shorthaired, and with jaws as large as a man’s hand. They even followed him to bed, each taking up a position in a corner. I never did feel comfortable around those mongrels — more than merely beastly, they reminded me of black Cerberuses.

Later, Jimmy asked me: “Were you really dead?”

“I think so.”

“Death. .” He sighed. “What’s it like?”

“It isn’t like anything. Whatever comes next, though, is beyond all comprehension. Time and space fade. A peace beyond words.”

“Describe it.”

“It can’t be described. All I can say is that the most horrific thing isn’t to die, it’s then coming back.”

Jimmy laughed. “You hold it against me that I saved your life?”

Covering my face with a pillow, I answered him: “It’s like drinking a million gallons of your own pus.”

Jimmy didn’t like somber dialogues. And, even less, being on the back foot. “When this is all over, I’ll get you some title or other,” he said. “Count? Marquis? Baron, let’s leave it at baron.” He laughed fulsomely. “I love being at war. Know why? In peacetime, my family’s constantly around me. There’s no better excuse for getting away than a good campaign, where I can enjoy time with my dogs and my lovers.”

Jimmy didn’t have any Points on his forearm. He’d had teachers, and he’d been in charge of enough sieges to earn more Points than I had. I asked why.

“It was the first political decision I ever made,” he explained. “With time, I’d obviously have become the world’s greatest engineer. But a Points Bearer will only ever be a Points Bearer; engineering will absorb him to the exclusion of all else. Kings do not serve engineers but vice versa. And my aim is to be king.” He turned to face me. “Why do you ask?”

“If you were an engineer with Points,” I said, “I’d have to die for you. Given that you aren’t, that means I’m allowed to kill you without the slightest compunction.”

This tickled him greatly. “Yes, I had forgotten. Engineers and their hallowed Mystère. Do you really think it’s those little dots that stop you from stabbing me to pieces? Say if I gave you Verboom, the fact that he has three Points tattooed on his forearm would stop you from ripping his guts out?” He turned serious. “Le Mystère is nothing but an old wives’ tale, something engineers use to spice up the insipidness of stones and angles. Having your own secret god — or an anti-god — makes you feel important, more important than you really are. Le Mystère? No such thing.” He turned over, resting his head against the pillow and adding: “Snuff out the candles, would you.”

8

Jimmy was never one to dawdle. Early the next morning, in his most despotic voice, he said to me: “You said you’d obey my order. The time has come.”

I made an exaggerated, courtly bow, and asked: “Your orders?”

He swept the air majestically with one hand and became less tense. “Oh, a trifle,” he said. “Have a look at this.”

He spread two large maps out on his study table. The first showed the trench designed by Verboom and sabotaged by me, and the second, Dupuy’s planned trench. I took my time looking over both. And I can assure you: Sight can be a conduit for great remorse.

I couldn’t stop myself from crying. Silent tears that trickled down to my chin and off, pouring onto the maps. Jimmy noticed. “Why do you cry?”

“Such. . lovely trenches. .” I said. “What do you know about the feelings of an engineer?”

Whichever Attack Trench Jimmy opted for, our ancient and battered walls would fall. Add any good design to sufficient matériel and the right number of sappers, and there’s no way of stopping any Attack Trench; sooner or later, the ramparts will be reached. But if Jimmy went with Dupuy’s, which was perfection itself, it would take no time at all: They’d be through in a week. For all that I was a prisoner, I had to do something, anything, to turn Jimmy against Dupuy’s. But how was I supposed to do that? How?

Sounding as offhand as I could, I said: “Did Verboom have a chance to look at Dupuy’s plan and vice versa?”

Jimmy failed to pick up on the fearfulness underpinning my question. I’d managed to fool Verboom, a Three Points, with my trench, with some difficulty. But if Dupuy, a Seven Points, looked closely at it, that would be curtains. He’d see the trumpery, all the subversions I’d introduced.

Luckily, though, Jimmy exclaimed: “Please, no! A cockfight is of no interest to me. I want them each to defend his plan, not to knock the other’s down. We’ll keep it friendly. When you’re involved in a siege, the number one thing is to have cohesion in your forces.”

If only the Red Pelts had been like Jimmy! Rather than backing Don Antonio, they spent all their time pestering him and having tantrums. Within the city, a small, divided force; without, Jimmy, an iron fist inside an iron glove.

“I’ve called them in. To expand on their plans. Of course, I’ll have the final say. You know more than I do when it comes to trenches. You can advise me.”

“What an honor!” I said. “Little me, judging such esteemed engineers. Dupuy is one of your staff officers. You sent him ahead to design an Attack Trench for you. Why wouldn’t you just go with his and be done with it?”

“I brought old Dupuy along because he’s the greatest living engineer. But if there are two offers on the table, why put down money for the horse without hearing about the second?”

He ceased his boyish informalities when the time came to hear the “two peacocks” (as he called them). It was as though he had stepped into a monarch’s guise. “We’ll hear what they have to say. And remember: You’ll be the critic who hides behind the king on the balcony and whispers in his ear. Really, without knowing it, they’ll be addressing you. I’ll ask your advice when they leave.”

He sent me into the room adjacent, the wall so thin that I’d be able to hear, without being seen. There was also a crevice at eye level for me to peep through.

In they came. Jimmy made them sit facing each other and asked them to go through the strong points of their respective plans. Dupuy first, then Verboom. This they did, but inevitably, disagreements arose. The Antwerp butcher was the first to be interrupted.

“Saint Clara?” scoffed Dupuy. “Attack the Saint Clara bastion? A travesty to all ideas of siege warfare!”

“A travesty?” said Verboom. “I’ve been working on this trench for years. You show up, cobble something together, and dare to say it’s better!”

Dupuy turned to Jimmy. “Marshal, please. This city has been besieged on three occasions in recent times. Three! And each time the trenches aimed for the same area — and it was not Saint Clara! Are we to suppose that every one of our illustrious forebears got it so wrong?”

“I may hail from Antwerp,” bellowed Verboom, “but I am, have been, and always will be loyal to Philip! God save him! I’ve suffered captivity for him, and never will I err in my loyalty.”

This was an extremely poor line of argument for him to choose. Jimmy could still remember the way Verboom had criticized him before Almansa on the basis of where he came from. Verboom was in for a tongue-lashing now.

“My dear Verboom,” said Jimmy. “We’re not here to discuss our places of birth. Roots, roots, roots. . Men are not vegetables. Would you suggest I lead an English army against His Majesty Philip V of Spain?”

Verboom imagined plots where there were none. “I see! This meeting is nothing but a formality. I’m an engineer, I was raised by engineers. But evidently, my stock pales in comparison to that of the great Vauban.” He got to his feet, fists clenched on the table. “The king of Spain will hear of this! How his true subjects are being overlooked in favor of the French!”

Now Dupuy had taken umbrage; though every inch the gentleman, he also had a volcanic temper. Overly volcanic, really. “Enough, you whore, flaunting your stones and your angles!” he spat, getting up from his seat. “Everyone knows the way you operate, claiming discrimination where there is none, gaining privileges that way. You don’t serve any king — you use them one and all.”

Jimmy found the slanging match deeply uninteresting and did nothing to hide the fact. I remember the way he gazed at the ceiling, fanning his face with a hand. Lord, it’s warm, he seemed to be saying, and how insufferable all this fervor is. Then a messenger came to the door. The message must have been pressing, to interrupt one of Marshal Berwick’s counsels. Jimmy read the letter, utterly uninterested in the cockfight going on in the room.

“Silence, gentlemen!” he said, looking up from the piece of paper. “I have a story for you. The month of July takes its name from Julius Caesar, August from Octavian Augustus. Augustus was succeeded as emperor by a certain Tiberius. The bootlickers in the Roman senate said would he like September to be named after him instead. Tiberius, less of a tyrant than he seemed, derided them: ‘What will you do,’ he said, ‘when you run out of months but still have emperors?’ ”

Verboom and Dupuy fell quiet, trying to work out the meaning of the Caesarian tale. The room remained silent. Jimmy sent them out with a waft of the hand. Each, a little disoriented, bowed and left the room.

“What did you mean by the parable?” I asked, stepping out from my hiding place.

Jimmy was deep in thought. “Oh, that? No idea. They were about to come to blows, I thought, so why not send them off with something else to think about. Men would rather say nothing and be thought fools than speak and confirm it.” He tossed the message to the ground, looking angry. “You won’t believe what it says.”

It had Philip V’s seal on the paper.

“That’s right, him, the madman crowned out of sheer luck!” he exclaimed. “He writes to offer me the position of commander in chief of all the armies in Spain. Me, a marshal of Louis XIV of France! What kind of offer is this? For me to abandon Louis? In favor of an unshod army of beggars? Why not name me king of the gypsy armies of Hungary?” He screwed up the paper, enraged. “For the love of God! If a person has Homer, why would he choose Virgil?” He began pacing the room, brooding, with the piece of paper in his hand. He had quite enough problems as it was, and whichever way you looked at it, this put him in a tricky position: Saying no to a king is always dangerous.

“And what have you decided about the trenches?” I asked. “Verboom’s or Dupuy’s?”

He continued to think and pace, eyes downcast. My heart began to pound. If ever I have prayed — to God or to le Mystère—it was then: Please, please, choose my trench, my trench, mine.

Jimmy suddenly halted. Eyes still fixed on the floor, he lifted a forefinger toward the ceiling. “Verboom’s. We’ll go with Verboom’s trench. . I’ll reject Philip’s offer, of course,” he said, and with truly regal generosity, elucidating, “which will be a snub, and no mistake. If that comes with word that I’ve also marginalized Verboom, he’ll take it even worse. We’ll begin work as soon as we have all the matériel. Let’s get to it; the sooner we finish with this insane Catalan rabble, the better.”

My dear vile Waltraud has told me to stop — she wants to know about Anfán and Amelis. Fatty Waltraud is concerned: Was I really ready to abandon my nearest and dearest? Was I lying to Jimmy? My answer: No, I wasn’t lying.

Now for something that, on the face of it, will seem incongruous: The highest love is shown by denying that selfsame love. Jimmy was Jimmy — it would have been impossible to lie to him, he’d have picked up on it in a heartbeat. The only way I could hide my feelings from him was simply not to feel them.

If I truly loved them, I was going to have to postpone that love, supplant my feelings. Fleetingly but believably, to be a different person, transfigured. Overlaying one love with another was the only option. And I assure you, it was as difficult, if not more so, than designing my dissembling Attack Trench. Yes, I’ll say it: For a period of forty-eight hours, I surrendered myself. The amount of time needed to dissipate Jimmy’s suspicions. Come the third day, he gave me the gift of a French captain’s uniform.

Everyone knows the old sailors’ saying: A single drop of tar and the whole barrel is corrupt. In the vast Bourbon encampment, I set myself to be that drop. It’s amazing the damage that one man, one single man, can do if he sets his mind to it.

I went around proudly in my new French uniform, from one end of the camp to the other. There are captains and then there are captains, and my uniform was white and brand-new: Longlegs Zuvi, looking fine, teaching the rank and file a thing or two about respect. A captain who looked like something straight out of the salons of Versailles, appearing before the grubby troops, knee-deep in mud, brought low by the yearlong siege. I made a nuisance of myself whenever an opportunity presented itself.

I caught sight of a Navarran recruit with a stupid-looking face. I began lecturing him and, when I had cowed him, led him to the artillery depot. Placing a mallet and a scalpel in his hands, I ordered him to get to work on the cannon vents. This would break them, and they could never be used again, but an order’s an order. In tyrannical armies, soldiers are meek servants. Unlike men in the Coronela, these never questioned their superiors, let alone talked back. I left him to it. He’d be caught and surely hanged for hammering the cannons like that — but by then at least a few cannons would have been put out of action.

Gunpowder is such a precious resource that, usually, you see a guard posted at the store, and nobody is allowed to move it anywhere unless under express orders. But somewhere in a large siege, you’ll always find deposits being moved from one place to another. Should a decent saboteur insert himself in the distribution path, he’ll show his worth, ordering the cannon barrels to be taken to the infantry, and the gunpowder for the rifles to the artillery. My dear vile Waltraud doesn’t understand. Well, yes, if you spend your days boiling cabbages, what would you know about gunpowder? The granulation is different for different weapons — with the wrong powder, the cannonballs shoot all of a foot’s distance, and flintlocks explode, blinding the riflemen. Half a grain of gunpowder is enough to scorch a man’s eye.

It was when I came across an old acquaintance that I really began to enjoy myself: Captain Antoine Bardonenche. It was inevitable that we’d run into each other sooner or later, somewhere in the camp.

“My fine friend, finally, we meet!” he said. “But you’ve been demoted. You were lieutenant colonel under King Charles, and they’ve got you as a captain here.”

“Archduke Charles,” I corrected, fully inhabiting my role as deserter. “Only the rebels call that usurper King.”

“Ah, yes, well, what does it matter?” said Bardonenche, who couldn’t care a pepper about politics. “The point is, we’re both captains now. You must come and dine with me.”

I managed to make some more mischief before the day was out, and when night fell, I didn’t have much choice but to go and join him. It was bittersweet to dine together. The evening concluded over drinks in front of a campfire. The tired blue flames cast a melancholy light on our meeting. The days when we had frolicked around the lakes of Bazoches, alongside Jeanne and her sister, seemed a distant memory.

“Can I admit something to you?” he said, and proceeded with a sentimental nocturnal musing: “I hate this, I hate it all. All these months here, stagnating in this miserable battlefield. Have you ever seen such wretched soldiers? We look like an army of beggars.”

“I always thought you felt at home in war, good or bad.”

He shook his head. “This isn’t war anymore. We’re like wolves, circling around some defenseless prey. There’s neither honor nor dignity in putting these people to the sword.”

Bardonenche had been detailed with protecting the rearguard: whole months escorting supply carts and fighting Miquelets. “Not long ago, near a place called Mataró,” he said, “we set fire to an entire forest and drove out a group we’d cornered in there. How those pines blazed! Crackling like grenades, flames as high as the heavens. I called out to them to give themselves up. I gave them my word, four times, that they wouldn’t be murdered. It was useless.” He paused and then carried on. “When they finally couldn’t take it any longer, they came rushing out. And do you know what? Half of them were human torches. Even so, howling, their flesh on fire, they had only one thought: to come and throw themselves at us, to try and take some of us to the inferno with them. I ran one of them through with my saber. Their captain, I think. Look at this.” He handed me a small leather pouch. “This is what he was carrying. Strange, don’t you think?”

I opened it, finding it full of bullets. A number had flecks of dried blood on them.

“Do you believe in destiny?” he asked me.

“No,” I said.

“Nor do I. But it so happens that there are nineteen bullets there, and I in my time have killed nineteen men, in duels or in battle.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I ran my saber through his chest, right up to the hilt. The look on his face — it had to be seen to be believed. He tried to say something to me with his last breath. I couldn’t make it out.”

“Doubtless he was cursing you.”

Bardonenche turned to look at the fire again. “Yes, most likely.”

“Tiredness” and “Bardonenche” were two words that didn’t usually go together. But he seemed exhausted that night, hugging his knees, Busquets’s pouch held in one hand. Busquets, the Miquelet captain I met during the expedition, the one who was so intent on liberating Mataró. His superstition was that he wouldn’t die until that pouch was full. It seemed Saint Peter had finally opened his gates.

“Why hold on to such a macabre keepsake?” I said, gazing at the pouch as though it were a crystal ball.

“I don’t know,” he said, groaning. “I feel as though it belongs to me now. I’ve tried to get rid of it, but I can’t.”

I smiled incredulously. “Can’t? I’ll take it from you if you like.”

He shook his head once more. “Why could anyone possibly want to carry around a pouch of used bullets?”

“No idea,” I said, sighing. “Perhaps the man wanted his killer to have it. Or perhaps it’s something more sinister.”

“More sinister?”

I tried to put myself in a Miquelet’s shoes. “When the Miquelets find a Frenchman or a Spaniard with a rifle whose flint is Catalan, or a sword with a Catalan coat of arms on the cuff, they execute their prisoner using that same stolen weapon. The owner’s name is sewn onto the pouch—‘Jaume Busquets, capitá.’ If any friends of the dead man were to capture you, they’d make you swallow the contents. That’s their way.”

The moment I’d spoken, I regretted it. Saying anything cruel to Bardonenche was akin to being nasty to a child, for all that the man was the best swordsman in Europe. Needing to get back to the Guinardó house, I stood up.

“My fine friend,” said Bardonenche, bidding me farewell without getting up, “it’s wonderful you’re serving with us. Do you know what I mean? I’ve thought on more than one occasion, Dear Lord, if this carries on to the bitter end, there’s the chance you’re going to have to kill your Bazoches companion.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. “Antoine,” I mused aloud, “it could be that things are a little more complicated than our parents and teachers told us.”

The clearsightedness of his answer, when usually, he was so puerile, took me aback. “That would be very sad,” he said. “Our love for our betters would mean we’ve embraced lies. But as good sons and good students, what choice did we have?” In a funereal tone, he added: “I have no desire to kill you.”

This sent chills through me; perhaps he wasn’t as clueless as he seemed. Our friendship, perhaps, meant he was able to deduce various things. Including the fact that a “rebel” lieutenant colonel, so committed to the defense of his own city, would not so easily switch sides. Perhaps Bardonenche demonstrated the most generous kind of friendship that night: to not betray the traitor.

“Do you believe in premonitions?” he asked me.

“No,” I said.

“I do. If Barcelona doesn’t surrender, and we embark on the full assault, it will be the death of me. I know it.”

Saying this, he turned his gaze back to the fire.

9

The trench was begun on July 11, 1714, in the night.

Jimmy was well stocked on all counts: The first parallel had thirty-five hundred men to dig it, and these received cover from ten infantry battalions and ten companies of grenadiers. Accustomed to war being waged on a shoestring, I couldn’t but envy such fabulous resources.

My French captain’s uniform made it easy for me to infiltrate myself into the trench. No sooner had the digging begun than I hopped in. And how hard they worked! Thousands of spades, in a line over half a mile long, flinging earth forward, toiling as hard as galley slaves.

The furrow went from knee-deep to chest-deep in a small space of time. Thousands of the fajina baskets were being circulated around. These they would line with stones and sand and then place on the front edge of the trench, followed by further reinforcing shovelfuls of earth. I despaired over the Coronela’s inaction — What are you waiting for? I thought. Attack, you ought to have attacked already!

You can usually bank on a counter-assault the first day a trench begins. The men working, and the troops providing covering fire, are very exposed. The most common maneuver consists of an artillery bombardment followed by large numbers of men carrying out a lightning sortie. If they plan properly and have fortune on their side, the besieged troops will overrun the men covering the trench; the parallel is not very deep yet and doesn’t provide much shelter. The idea of this first sortie is to ruin the works, even fill in what’s been dug, then immediately fall back. It doesn’t seem like much, but in war, morale is crucial. The city sends the attacking army a message: “What you’ve done is undone. Come and get us!” The works have to start all over again.

The Bourbons were vulnerable, as is the case on the first day of any siege. But my redesign of Verboom’s trench also meant that they’d be beginning particularly close to the ramparts. An unusually short distance, truly. Only two thousand feet, which was one and a half times the distance a rifle could shoot. My secret hope — which, naturally, I didn’t communicate to Verboom — was that a general as attentive as Don Antonio would notice the works and attack. Everything would play in our favor. With this first parallel so close to the ramparts, our lads would be able to tackle the trench in an instantaneous charge. If they charged quickly, they’d have no losses until arm-to-arm combat began, and then their zeal would surely be far greater than that of the Beast’s French mercenaries or Little Philip’s Spanish recruits.

Jimmy gave the order for drums to be played throughout the night, a standard procedure to drown out the sound of the men at work. A waste of time. Even if the works begin in the middle of the night, several thousand men digging are impossible to hide. The next morning is the worst for the sappers: Following a long night’s work, they’re exhausted, and as the sun comes up, they relax — nothing’s happened yet. That’s when a lightning attack comes from the besieged army.

But on this occasion, the sun was already up, and there was no sign of any activity on the city walls. Why didn’t the Barcelonans attack, why? I broke down inside: Don’t you see? I said to myself. Sweet Jesus, attack! And then I experienced the most atrocious feeling, one I’d never wish on another living soul. “My God,” I said, “maybe you designed it too well, Martí!”

Of course Don Antonio was planning a lightning attack on the trench the moment it began — which I, not being inside the city, naturally had no way of knowing. So what was going on? The Red Pelts — for a change — had stuck their oars in. Don Antonio spent the night of the twelfth preparing the sortie, and the very first thing on the thirteenth, he sent word to his wife up on Mount Montjuic that he would come to her at nine in the morning and they would later take lunch together. The letter was dictated publicly, so that at eight in the morning the whole city knew that, instead of attacking, General Villarroel was going to spend the entire day dining sumptuously. A truly Homeric snub to the enemy! “They begin their trench? In that case, I shall fill my belly. See how little I care for what they do or do not do!”

Even my dear vile Waltraud can tell that the letter was meant to throw the Bourbon spies off the scent. As we know, there were more spies swarming around the city at that time than flies on a donkey’s behind. At nine in the morning, Don Antonio did indeed go up to Montjuic surrounded by a large and visible escort. But his plan was to slip back at eleven, a long while before anyone in the Mediterranean would ever sit down to lunch, and then lead the attack.

Among the ministers, Casanova had been beside himself since the moment he’d received word that the Bourbons had begun their trench. Coming across one of our infantry generals, he lost his temper. “Seeing as you’re going to Villarroel’s little party in Montjuic,” he cried, “you can tell him that the people won’t take it all well, not at all well, that the enemy is being allowed to go about its work so freely!”

This general, of course, passed the message on. Appalled at the dressing-down he’d been given, he made out that the conseller en cap’s words had been even more injurious. There was nothing Don Antonio could do but defer the attack to go and conciliate the ministers. Not satisfied with having ruined the ploy, Casanova hardly calmed down even when he was made to understand what the plan had been. To top it off, he held forth on what he thought the approach should be for the sortie. I still think that no one in besieged Barcelona quite understood to what point a military man like Don Antonio had his patience tested. There were a hundred more darts on the part of Casanova, not one of which is worth recounting.

As Casanova and Don Antonio argued, I was huddled in the first parallel, sheltering as best I could from the cannonade raining down from our parsley-chewing artillery chief, Francesc Costa.

Costa, ever his own man, hadn’t waited for any orders to begin firing. Before the sun was up, he’d relocated eight mortars and forty-eight cannons, which then began hurling cannonballs and grapeshot down on the first parallel and my poor head.

If artillery were an art, that dawn bombardment would go down as immortal. The missiles curved perfectly through the air. Smoke trails marked their flight. Some of the shells weighed over a hundred pounds. They flattened everything and raised immense fountains of earth wherever they fell, fajinas in pieces, wicker baskets ejected like cutlery.

Costa’s Mallorcans alternated stone shells with fused explosive ones — when the latter were two or three meters above the ground, they’d burst open in a flash of white and yellow, spilling red-hot shards onto the heads of everyone in the trench. It was no easy thing to make the fuse exactly the correct length so that it would blow just as it came over the trench, not a moment sooner; too high and the grapeshot wouldn’t cause as much damage, too late — once the shell had landed — and the ground would absorb the explosion. If you’re facing someone with Costa’s skills, the only hope is to dig your trench deep and not too wide, thereby reducing the lethal area. But if you remember, I had convinced Verboom to do the opposite, with very wide and shallow trenches.

As you know, though, I wasn’t with our artillery but behind the Bourbon lines. Which twist of fate meant I was on the receiving end of Costa’s artistic talents, the cannonballs whooshing and exploding above me. I remember the smell of the warm, wet earth in the trenches, and its still-to-be-braced walls. All around me — crammed beneath and on top of me — dozens of workers were sheltering, as I was, cowering and whimpering in fear of the aerial detonations. The sheer chaos of an Attack Trench means that any survivor has an extreme tale to tell. It is a three-dimensional fight for your life: on the ground, using your hands, in the air, with the bombs; and under the ground, with the mines. Add to that a fourth: You are fighting against time. The advance of a trench is the world’s most quantifiable truth. Even so, that’s the case only in terms of le Mystère or from the perspective of a Ten Points. To the engineer on the side of the besieging army, the advance will always seem to go at a snail’s pace; to the one inside the city, faster than a running deer. An Attack Trench is both the most precise human endeavor and that which must take place under the most savage conditions.

Finally, after midday, several thousand men sprang from the city — my neighbors — ready for anything. I peeked over the parapet and saw the bones of the stockade thickening with people on their way to attack the recently begun trench.

Sheer pandemonium. The attack came at all points of the trench, right, left, and center. The cavalry came in support, attacking down the wings. Both armies’ artillery fired ceaselessly, and there was so much commotion, smoke, and gunpowder that you didn’t know who was killing whom. My initial idea was to hide in some rift in the ground, wait for the wave of attackers to come past my position, identify myself, and go back to the city with them. Good plan, wouldn’t you say? Unfortunately, it didn’t take into account my proverbial cowardice. Hundreds of men charged in my direction, drunk and screaming like stuck pigs. I thought I recognized them as a unit that had been set up recently, grenadiers under the orders of Captain Castellarnau.

My God, I thought, they seem rather angry. Three Normandy battalions went out to engage them. Castellarnau’s men rushed forward like demons, bayoneting the Normans to pieces and moving on. A little closer and I could see their wine-reddened eyes. Terrified, I said to myself: “Martí, they aren’t messing around.” They advanced, letting out drunken cries, calling Saint Eulalia’s name, and bayoneting any fallen men as they came past. The Normans dispatched, there was nothing now between them and the first parallel.

A troop attacking like that will recognize no one. No one! They in a frenzy, me in a white uniform. I then had one of the most bizarre thoughts of my long military life: Mother of God, my allies are nearly upon us. Mercy!

“Run, run!” I bellowed at the workers around me. “Let’s go or the rebels will cut us to shreds!”

The men near me were all workers and, seeing me flee, wavered. Castellarnau’s drunk grenadiers were nearly upon us, and all the while, the cannonballs continued to fall with devilish precision. If even the officers are fleeing, why would lowly workers, who have no military training, stay?

The entire brigade followed me. (Truly, it was a good thing for them, because as I later found out, the few who did stay were massacred.) Most flung their picks and shovels to the ground, carts and half-full fajinas, and sprinted astonishingly quickly — some were so frightened they even overtook me!

The attack fizzled out without any great effect. A spark rather than a full-blown fire, remarkable only for the numbers of dead. And who cares about the dead? The men in the sortie occupied the trench, yes, did as much damage as they could, yes, but the minute they were gone, another four thousand soldiers, workers, and sappers stepped in and renewed the digging effort.

I was handed a report on the day’s activity to take to Jimmy. On my way to Mas Guinardó I read it — a punishable offense. Six hundred and forty-eight dead and wounded on a single night and day of trench work. The note came from Verboom himself, and good old Zuvi (what irony!) was the one charged with taking it to Jimmy.

As I entered Mas Guinardó carrying the account, my thoughts were on how many more would have suffered had things gone well. Jimmy was standing in his study, looking out of the window. The carnage that had just taken place was clearly the last thing on his mind. He was lost in thought, gnawing a fist. He turned and looked at me and immediately returned his gaze to the window. His only words were a quiet groaning as he repeated obsessively: “She dies, she dies. . ”

“Who?” I asked.

“The queen, the queen. . ”

I stared in astonishment. “The queen of England! Dying?” I punched the air. “But Jimmy, what marvelous news!”

My God, what a coincidence, and what a disastrous one. Though for diametrically opposed reasons, both Jimmy and I were set to benefit from the news.

The balance of power in England is a very delicate thing, swinging between Tories and Whigs, who alternate in power. With Queen Anne dead, a change of government was inevitable, and with it, a reversal of the policy of conciliating the Beast, of which she had been the principal supporter. And if London turned against Paris, an alliance with Barcelona was also inevitable.

They honor a certain power in England, something unfamiliar in autocracies: that of public opinion. Catcalling critiques of foreign policy are constantly being published in the London gazettes. The “Catalan case” being a glaring example. There were debates about it in their Parliament.

Let’s not fool ourselves. Pericles’s Greece sent an expedition to Sicily, but not due merely to the goading of the demagogues. England was never altruistic, quite the opposite; public opinion and private interests spurred it on. But if there was a chance that they might come to our aid, what did it matter to us why? England had the strongest navy, and the French blockade would be broken. And as had happened at the first Bourbon siege, in 1706, when the English fleet came into port, they’d inject reinforcements and supplies and do wonders for morale. The besieging of a port that is not blockaded is, by nature, unpracticable: dixit Vauban.

With Anne’s death, it would make sense to defer the sentence. Even two or three days could change everything. And my trench was the deferral.

And Jimmy? That royal death made sense of everything that had happened so far in his life. England in turmoil, the succession to be decided. Jimmy was born to be king, and now that the opportunity had arisen, where was he? Pinned down thousands of miles south by a cause that was anything but close to his heart. Managing a full-blown siege in the south and a dynastic rebellion in the north at the same time — not possible. He would have to choose.

As cosmopolitan as Jimmy seemed, he was also a dyed-in-the-wool Englishman. When his father, the last Catholic king of England, was exiled, Jimmy was raised at the French court. The Beast’s ministers were good to him and let his talents develop, in spite of his being a bastard. But as a mercenary in France’s pay, he could aspire only to a secondary role, and by 1714 he had all the credentials needed to put himself forward in London. He’d been on the winning side in countless battles, he was a marshal, and he’d seen a few things. He was tolerant of different religious beliefs (he had none), conciliatory to factions (he didn’t believe particularly in any one), and would apply himself in the name of any cause that would reflect well on him (he had served, and would be served by, all kinds). Vauban, as politically naive as Cicero, believed in a republic made up of virtuous males. Jimmy didn’t believe in any regime that he (along with one or two vicious males) wasn’t ruling. His continuing service under the Beast, however, had brought him to Spain. To abandon the siege of Barcelona, just after replacing Pópuli, was unthinkable. Anne’s death forced him to decide between obligations he’d accrued in France since childhood, and his destiny.

He had plenty of reason to hate us. The war that had raged across the world for fourteen years was over, to all intents and purposes, but those blind Barcelonans, by refusing to face the truth, were going to hamstring his royal aspirations. Many were the days I spent at his side; I could have tried to understand what made him so fanatical. But I never did. Jimmy began and ended the sieges not bothering to find out who his enemies were or what cause they were fighting for. I believe that he didn’t hate us, because he didn’t have strong feelings about good and evil. We were an obstacle to him, more than an object of loathing.

And then he fell ill. The doctors failed to see the blindingly obvious: It wasn’t so much a bodily sickness as the core of his soul being fractured. He could stay loyal to the Beast and bring the siege to an end. Or he could betray him and go and pursue his destiny in England as a contender for the throne. Finally be a ruler himself, or via one of his mad half brothers. Carry on as a lackey with no future, or try for the ultimate prize.

The tension manifested in a virulent fever, which his military zeal only succeeded in aggravating. He spent his days buzzing around, supervising everything, especially the arrival of the matériel needed for the trench to progress. He’d get back to Mas Guinardó too tired to take off his armor — I had to undo the cinches and straps for him. The sweats had made his chest guard swell and harden, and it was like prising off a tortoise’s shell. As I took off his clothes, feeling full of hate for him, he turned and begged me: “You’ll never betray me, isn’t that right?”

Jimmy’s bottomless, insatiable egoism; his despot nature. His whispered fever ravings—Trench!. . Go! — put me on edge.

One morning he couldn’t get out of bed. He spent the day there, soaking several changes of sheets. Come nightfall, the officer of the watch arrived to ask for that night’s password. He was none other than Bardonenche.

He struck me that day as more committed to service than ever, kindness in his eyes, a total lack of prejudice. When he came in, I was helping the marshal sit up in the bed, my hands bathed in his sweat, our odors intermixed. But not a peep from Bardonenche, no judgment. He took a couple of tentative steps closer, arching his eyebrows, looking at the shivering Jimmy. The only words he had were ones of compassion: “Dear, dear sir,” he whispered.

Feeling a sense of urgency, I slapped Jimmy a little. “Jimmy, Jimmy. The army needs the password.”

Still writhing, as though possessed, his eyes rolling upward, he half whispered, half gurgled: “Loyalty.”

“If he dies,” said Bardonenche feelingly, “it will be a disaster. A siege can’t withstand three changes at the helm in such a short space of time.”

Jimmy’s poor state had an outside witness now. After that, it would have been very easy for me to kill him myself; no one would have been able to pin such an inevitable death on me.

But no, I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t. May my dead forgive me.

His shivers became more and more violent. He spent that final night clinging to me, and he held on so tightly that my ribs hurt for three days after.

“Tell me you’ll never leave me, not you,” he whispered as the fever took him over. “Trench. . Go. . King. . Kingdom. . ”

At around five in the morning, he went slack. I laid a hand against his forehead. The fever had passed. I was thankful and at the same time lamented it. I know that doesn’t add up. Put it in, though!

And as he slept, I dressed and left.

There was one thing covering my flight from Mas Guinardó: What castaway abandons ship to go back to the sinking bit of flotsam? No one would suspect a French officer, particularly one as good-looking as me in my new uniform, of wanting to cross the lines to flee to the moribund city.

The first light of dawn had begun to show on the horizon. I walked a long way along the inside edge of the cordon in search of the gate farthest from the trench to my left, which was lit up regularly by the flashes of fire from either side’s cannons. Thousands of men were working in the furrows, the bustle of battle concentrated in that one zone. The greater the distance between all that and me, then, the better.

Wandering around inside the Bourbon camp was risky. Finally, I simply had to choose one. There were a number of guards posted there to fend off any sortie from the Barcelonans.

Well, one of the advantages of fleeing from the army headquarters is knowing the password. “Loyalty!” I said.

I didn’t break stride, flourishing my hand majestically for them to open the gate. They obeyed. After all, they were there to stop rebels from coming in, not to stop a French captain from leaving to carry out some what secret mission.

Once outside, I could feel the guards’ eyes tracking me as I advanced into no-man’s-land. (Those white Bourbon uniforms, however shabby and covered in mud they became, always put them at a disadvantage when fighting at night. It made them very fearful of leaving the safety of their little cordon.) I strolled around for a few minutes as if examining the defenses from outside — how deep the ditch around the cordon was, and the piles of firewood piled up at thirty-meter intervals, ready to be set alight to both illuminate and blind any approaching attackers. Once I was a little way away, half enveloped by the predawn darkness, I broke into a run. Use your legs, Zuvi!

No shots rang out. Either they couldn’t see me, or they preferred to turn a blind eye. Soldiers, as a rule, know that getting involved with officers only wins you trouble. Which suited me. It would take Jimmy and the others a while longer to find out I’d fled.

Once I was closer to the city, I got down and began crawling; the terrain was a constant up and down, as though you were advancing through a sea swell. I was a way from reaching the city walls when I ran into a soldier dragging himself through no-man’s-land, though in the opposite direction. The choppy, broken-up terrain, full of craters from misdirected artillery fire, meant we didn’t see each other until the last moment. Down on our bellies like earthworms, we looked at each other, neither of us knowing very well what was supposed to happen next. When work had begun on the trench, the faint hearted and the mercenaries had begun slipping away from the city and making for the cordon. Hardly surprising, given that the city was condemned.

Now, here was a good one for the philosophers of military law: Two deserters meet on a piece of disputed land; is their duty still to kill? We decided not. We pretended not to have seen each other. There were other men, perhaps a dozen, following him, wriggling along like worms. When they came past, they looked at me, not antagonistically, but like I was insane. By this late stage in the siege, almost all the professional soldiers had deserted. The remaining force was an army made up of friends and neighbors.

Our poor bastions and ramparts came into sight, rising up like rotted molar teeth. My senseless return had a lot of Don Antonio about it. Really, the siege of Barcelona was a dispute between two antithetical authorities: Jimmy, subtle, corrupt, a denizen of the higher echelons, the self-interests of Versailles; and Don Antonio, that adorable Castilian maniac, absurdly self-sacrificing, stubborn as a mule, and with the manners of a commoner.

And what of my son, the son I was leaving behind, possibly forever? Returning to the city, I was bidding him, and our chances of ever embracing, farewell. And yet my decision was based on a principle common among the Coronela: Blood ties would always be trumped by the bond between those who spill blood and tears side by side. Am I making myself clear — that conflicts also raged within every combatant? Evil might offer us silks, honors, pleasure, and le Mystère might promise a way out of those bribes in exchange for nothing — or in exchange for a Word. But those internal conflicts were what really urged men on.

They were going to kill me. No, worse. On elbows and knees, I made my way to a darkness more wretched than death. And all for the sake of a crookbacked old man, a deformed dwarf, a savage of a child, and a dark-haired whore. The poets don’t dare say it, so I will:

Love’s a piece of shit.

10

The moment I arrived back in Barcelona, it was clear how much things had gone downhill during my long absence.

With Jimmy’s arrival, the French fleet had been given a boost. Now only the occasional very small ships were managing to make it past the blockade. They had to be small and swift, which meant they could bear only insignificant amounts of cargo. And with the sea supply line definitively strangled, the warehouses in the city were quickly emptied.

Though at exorbitant prices, the Barcelonans had still been able to buy food until that moment. To be clear, a Catalan peso was divided into twenty sueldos, and a typical worker’s daily wage was two sueldos. Since January 1714, one liter of wine had cost eight sueldos, and the same amount of liquor, fifteen. A couple of hen eggs (people kept coops on their disintegrating balconies), three sueldos. All meat, from the moment the siege began, had been prohibitively expensive: A couple of hens would set you back two pesos; half a pound of meat, one Catalan peso. A Catalan peso would get you ten pounds of barley or fifteen of corn. To bake a loaf of bread had become a serious challenge.

The first goods to disappear during a siege would be combustibles: firewood and coal. The winter of 1713–1714 had been a cold one, and the reserves had been depleted. People had resorted to burning furniture. As if that weren’t enough, rampart defenses also required wood, just as much as they did stone. Things got so dire that we had to dismantle the bridges, or recs, that crossed the city canals. Two hundred and five trees once lined the Ramblas, and even they were victim to the voracious efforts of the engineers. The dear Ramblas, that lovely avenue: new trees planted along it after every siege, only to be felled again at the beginning of the next. While I’d been in the Bourbon encampment, the famine had spread. I came back into the city at the beginning of August, when the blockade was at its peak, and at that point even paying astronomical prices wouldn’t get you any of the now nonexistent stuffs. What little there was got apportioned to those fighting — so what did the people eat?

In the summer of 1714, the only thing available was a kind of torta baked with the husks of beans. The dregs from the storehouse floors, so putrid and foul-smelling that it’s hard to believe we managed to swallow that soggy, fetid wheat paste. In Jimmy’s company, I’d eaten fillet steaks three times a day. The change of diet was so abrupt that it took me three days to resign myself to it — though, in the end, there being no other option, I did exactly that. The stomach is master to all. Francesc Castellví, our Valencian captain, recounted an experiment he’d carried out using a crust of this husk torta: He broke off a little and tried feeding it to one of the few dogs left in the city, only for the dog to run away in disgust.

My thoughts were all of Amelis and Anfán once I entered the city. They’d felt so far away, and it had seemed so unlikely I’d ever see them again, that it had felt like achieving the impossible when I managed to think of anything else. And now, knowing they were close by, I was overcome by the need to take them in my arms. Such are the emotions surrounding a reunion: The closer our loved ones become, the more we fear we’re going to lose them.

I found them in the rearguard immediately inside the ramparts, helping with the defense works. Instead of running and embracing them, I watched them from the corner for a few moments. In such abject conditions, you’re only too aware of how brief and scarce the good moments are, and it tends to make you content with far less. We were in the midst of the century’s most devastating war; we were on the receiving end of it, trapped inside a condemned city. But we were still alive. Our very existence defied the powers that were prevailing, and simply seeing Amelis and Anfán again, I almost broke down and wept.

I was so absorbed in the two of them that it took me a while to comprehend the nature of their task. There were brigades attaching heavy chains to the support beams of buildings, and when the order was given, lines of men and women heaved on these. The houses came crashing down, a great peal of dislodged stone and clouds of masonry. And I saw one of the wrecked houses was ours! I finally went over to them. The recompense was Amelis’s face when she saw me — I’d never seen her so happy.

Certain embraces mark out stages in our lives. I’d returned, I was with them again, and as we clasped each other, it was like sealing a bond that even two kings had not been able to break asunder. I could also feel how thin she’d become, her ribs jutting into my fingers.

“For the love of God,” I said, “you’re pulling out the rubble of our own home.”

“Well, there wasn’t much left of it anyway,” said Peret, who was with them. “We were hit by two cannonballs not long after you were captured.”

They were working, as it turned out, on building a “cutting.” A draconian measure, I learned, that had been imposed by the government.

When the walls of a sieged city suffer irreparable breaches, there’s one emergency course of action: the cutting. Its name comes from what it’s intended to do — cut the advance of the besieging army after they’ve taken control of the ramparts. The idea being to create a zigzag parapet just inside and running parallel with the ramparts. It wants to be as tall as possible, with a ditch dug along it to effectively increase that height. Just as the invaders think they’re through, there’s one more obstacle for them to get over.

At Bazoches, cuttings were given short shrift. Why? Because they’re useless. In all my many days, I’ve yet to see one fend off any large-scale assault. If Herculean bastions hadn’t done the job, why on earth would a puny barricade like that? Before my capture, I’d argued vehemently against the project. And my reasons were many.

First: the adverse effect of a cutting on morale. Knowing there’s one more place where they might shelter, the troops manning the rampart have a tendency to submit rather than fight to the death. Second: This second line of defense is less effective, and the invaders, emboldened by having vaulted the first hurdle, will overrun it easily. Third: The way Barcelona was set out meant that our cutting was situated on a plain directly beneath the bastions. The victorious Bourbons would be firing down on us from above, with all the advantages that signifies. Fourth and most important: This terrain also had lots of buildings in it, when what was needed was a clear shot; Barcelona was such a dense urban agglomeration that the buildings virtually hugged the inside of the rampart walls. Whole streets would have to be flattened. And the inhabitants would hardly be thrilled at the government demolishing their homes.

Though as it turned out, at least regarding the last point, I was mistaken. The people living in the houses weren’t opposed to the demolitions; they supported them, in the name of saving the city. They were all there, half-starved men and women helping to pull down the roofs beneath which they’d always lived. I couldn’t make sense of it. In order to defend their homes, the people of Barcelona were prepared to destroy them.

My Bazoches eyes detected something half buried in the ruins of our building. I went over. It was Amelis’s carillon à musique. I cradled it like a baby, cleaning off the dirt and muck. It was broken, unsurprisingly — I opened it, but no music came out. I later learned that Peret, who feared thieves more than going hungry, had taken it back to the house when Amelis wasn’t looking, thinking that the bolts on our door would be a better protection than the canvas walls at the beach. He seemed to have missed the fact that cannonballs can do slightly more harm than any robber. I took the music box back to Amelis. “It’s all right,” I said. “We’ll find someone to fix it.”

I felt somewhat guilty. I’d been taught how to build or repair monumental walls but was helpless in the face of a small box that played music when opened. You could never tell if Amelis was being serious when it came to the box, because what she said was: “No matter.”

What is a home, a hearth? Often it’s a melody or the memory of a melody. As long as she still had that box, she’d have a home. All that had broken was the outer casing, nothing more.

“No matter,” she insisted. “As long as we have the box, the melody will be easier to remember.”

I went to see Don Antonio that same afternoon. I had to tell him about Little Philip’s letters in support of a wholesale extermination, and about Queen Anne dying. And, of course, the details of the Attack Trench. Thanks to the discipline of the Spherical Room, each and every detail was stored in Zuvi’s little head.

Making my way to see him, in that brief journey, I observed the oppressive, filthy atmosphere of the city now. Pyramids of refuse piled up on the beach. The people of Barcelona, always so jovial, all now withdrawn, and the usual merry air replaced by a collective despondency. I saw many more men in the family-run shops than at the start, injured in the fighting, arms and legs missing, convalescing among their loved ones. Women cooking watered-down soups. I saw an argument break out between a couple of them, scratching and pulling each other’s hair. As far as I could make out, it was over half a stolen turnip. Entering the streets, I found the very color of the city to have altered, with a gray layer of dust and ash covering everything. And the only battalions not to have deserted, and still in one piece, were those of the Coronela.

Don Antonio was so gaunt, with his clothes hanging off him, that had it not been for his general’s uniform, I’d barely have recognized him. He’d hardly slept or eaten since the trench had begun, someone later told me. We sat opposite each other, and he listened at length to what I had to say. A map was spread out, and on it I sketched the features of the trench’s progress. The heart can be a stealthy thing sometimes, for the more technical the discussion became, the more I found myself shaken by heinous and disproportionate sentiments.

I’d learned at Bazoches how to focus my mind and put aside my feelings, which cloud clear thinking. But in the Barcelona of 1714, those two opposed poles converged; a deeply rational part of me awoke deep emotions. Who but I, after all, could possibly know the full significance of those ink lines and shapes on the map, apparently so innocuous?

I had set out the line along which the Bourbon trench was advancing, branch by branch. First parallel — there outside the window, growing longer by the hour, while we talked — second parallel, third parallel.

I found myself choking, and as I said the words “. . and finally, they’ll meet the moat, . ” my voice cracked. I excused myself: “Forgive me, General.”

“I want you to go and oversee the cuttings works,” he said. “And for the love of God, no blubbing!”

I tried to evince a firmness I utterly did not feel, and before going out, I came up with something in relation to the great question Vauban had one day asked me.

“Who knows,” I said, “if we persevere, perhaps we can devise a defense so perfect that the enemy will desist.”

But Don Antonio only shook his head. “Son, to come anywhere near perfection, it would be a question of going beyond merely mortal dimensions. And if it’s a crime to force professional soldiers into it, what authority could we call on to force an entire city?”

It was a hopeless cause, a fact that no one knew better than Don Antonio. He’d argued a thousand times for the government to negotiate peace. I don’t believe any man can ever have suffered a moral quandary such as his then. Persevering with a harebrained defense went against his conscience, when to give up would be an abrogation of his sense of honor. He made several gestures toward throwing in the towel. But he never meant it — he was only using it as a threat in negotiating with the Red Pelts. He was caught in a paradoxical whirlpool: the soldiers blindly obeying him, him obeying the Red Pelts, and the Red Pelts doing as the people wanted. And what was the Coronela, anyway, if not the citizens themselves, armed? Long before the trench had begun, Don Antonio had his eye on a single objective: to avoid a senseless slaughter. A noble ideal, but it was becoming less and less possible with every passing day, particularly as those who sought to save the day were the ones who preferred the idea of self-immolation to surrender.

And me? I’d become an observer of — and at the same time a participator in — that madness of ours. On my first night back, as I lay with Amelis in my arms under the canvas of our tent, we spoke very few words. The broken music box rested on the floor by our bed mat. I preferred not to say too much about what had gone on when I was in the Bourbon encampment. That morning, when the two of us had found each other again, the sight of her hands, bloody from hefting sharp rocks, had made my questions about Verboom feel somewhat less pressing. And now, together, with our naked skin touching, it seemed best just to say nothing.

“A favor” was the one thing I did say. “That Sunday dress of yours, the violet one. Burn it, would you.”

She let out a tired laugh. “Martí,” she said, “you perfect fool. It’s been a long while since I sold that dress, for money to buy food with. ”

Jimmy now aimed his artillery — all of it — on the bastions of Portal Nou and Saint Clara and on the stretch of rampart between. Pópuli’s murderous but erratic approach was over, replaced with one that was methodical and persistent, as well as adjusted to the way the trench was proceeding. And who had designed it? I found the thought growing and beginning to consume me. The furrow grew closer and closer, day and night, while the cannons sought to create a breach for the final assault.

Naturally, Costa and his Mallorcans did what they could to make life difficult for the enemy gunners. They aimed at the Bourbon cannons and the top of the trench, raining down death on as many sappers and soldiers as possible. The enemy also tried to pick out our cannons, and it was mayhem for all. Cannons from either side seeking each other out, and some of ours belching out grapeshot across their parallels, and some of theirs knocking down our walls and killing our men. Costa was always around, chewing on his parsley sprig, barking orders. Cannons fired, cannons dragged to a new position. And between them, the Coronela rifleman, making sure the soldiers in the trenches kept their heads down.

Those tailors, carpenters, and gardeners knew that until their shift was over, they’d be coming under cannon fire day and night, immured in the pentagonal tomblike bastions. They glanced nervously at the skies, in hope of clouds, as any rain would dampen the gunpowder and thereby slow the Bourbon artillery in their tasks. Alas, this was the peak of summer. The Mediterranean always makes Barcelona’s heat humid, and in August, the air turns to a horrible soup. Ah, yes, that blue cloudless sky, no promise of rain, blue, constantly blue: Never has the color blue seemed so uncompromising. And the heat — that of summer, combined with the heat of battle.

The bombardment was so intense that whenever you were up on one of the bastions, you’d constantly be breathing rock dust. Large motes floated on the air: Lifting your hand up was like stirring a dense pollen. A brief stint on Saint Clara or Portal Nou and the gaps between your teeth would fill up with earth; no, something worse, because you knew it was also formed of human remains, ground to stone and dust by the shelling. Some men grew snide, others lost their minds; not a man exists who can resist the effects of an endless bombardment, not a single one. Sometimes they’d crack suddenly, crawl off into a corner, and curl up, not let anyone come near. Their eyes would flutter faster than hummingbird wings, their hands make wringing motions. Madness is always a form of fleeing inside oneself.

The second parallel was reached. This enabled the Bourbons to install artillery that could then attack the ramparts side-on and from far closer. Costa could do little against so many. At this point, they began employing the “Ricochet,” a technique invented by none other than Marquis de Vauban himself.

Essentially, the Ricochet meant charging a cannon with only two thirds of the necessary gunpowder. Then the missiles wouldn’t punch into or embed in the walls but, rather, skim along like stones over the surface of a stream. It’s useful for clearing out cannons installed on ramparts. The missile would run the length of the bastion deck, flattening everything in its path. You’d see the cannonballs, the size of very large watermelons, almost seeming to gambol along and against the stoneworks. Each impact produced a horrifying noise, indifferent to human life. The Ricochet technique converted men into ants and bastions into trodden-on anthills. Hefty stone orbs bouncing, crunching, along the ground.

Left, right, and center they came — and from in front — and at times from all directions at once — and there were constant cries of: “A terra!”

If you did get down in time, it was unlikely that the weight of the cannonball would strike you dead — possibly landing on a soft part of your body, break a few ribs, at most. But they were deceptively quick, and their flight was mutilating. If you didn’t see one coming, it could tear off a limb and carry on past, impassively bouncing along the cobblestones. The sight of men chopped to pieces is a primordially terrifying one.

The battalions with orders to take their turn up on Portal Nou or Saint Clara would pause before ascending, and kneel down and pray. But they would go up. I’d do anything not to have to order men to occupy the entrances to the bastions. It would have been like supervising an execution of honorable men.

I believed that writing this book would unburden my memory. To let my treachery drain onto the pages, to liberate myself by speaking truth. I thought — oh, vanity — that deploying ink to honor the men and women who fought against all odds, for their liberty, would make me less miserable. But I now see it’s an impossible task. Why? Because of our concept of the heroic, which is so elusive, and so degenerate.

Our prototypical hero is proud Achilles. We see him standing victorious over Hector, sword raised. But how can we possibly extol the epic qualities of a filthy group of men when everything they do, their daily functions, is perfectly common? A single act doesn’t make a hero; constancy does. It isn’t a single bright point but a fine line, indestructibly modest: this ascent up onto inundated ramparts day after day after day. Leaving home and walking into the inferno, then returning home, and in the morning, joining in with death again. And given that so many heroic deeds were constantly being carried out, no one was seen as a hero. But this itself was what made them truly great. Heroes, like traitors, grow old. Those who sacrifice themselves remain; to them goes the glory. It’s impossible to live on in glory; only death has the power to confer the stamp of immortality.

Soon the third parallel was under way. I wept to see it, crouching down in a rubble-filled corner of one of the bastions, my hands covering my face, Ballester and his men standing around me. They didn’t understand my desolation, and at the same time, they intuited, knew, that my tears pertained to a superior knowledge, something beyond them. The Miquelets hid their feelings, always, and perhaps for that reason admired any open show of emotion.

The third parallel meant the beginning of the end. Goethe once asked me about Vauban’s philosophy. I summarized as best I could the basic principle of encircling a place with a trench comprising three large parallels. Goethe thought about it, then said: “It’s just as Aristotle said: All dramas consist of three acts.” I’d never thought of it like that before.

And on they came. The end of the third parallel would be the end itself. All they had left to do was create the cut that would come through the moat. Then put in place parapets (known as “the gentlemen,” in engineering parlance) and, next, to unleash the final assault, using fifty thousand well-drilled assassins.

The Attack Trench was a labyrinth by now, many thousands of feet long, zigzagging, turning corners, contorting in countless directions. Far to our left, we could see Montjuic, shrouded in smoke so that its peak resembled a flying mountain. All my Bazoches faculties were required, just to have a sense of what was going on a few feet in front of my nose. During one of the bombardments, I came to a particularly painful realization.

I was squatting down on the Portal Nou bastion at the time. I felt desperate seeing the breaches widening by the day, as the enemy cannons continued their work, and knowing there was nothing to be done now to plug them. Next to me was a soldier whose name I didn’t know. Like me, he was sheltering, just about, from the artillery, one hand gripping his rifle, the other clamping his hat down over his head. He was a nobody. A man dressed in poor, tattered clothes, covered in the dust of the battle. At one point, sneaking a look out through one of the many gaps in the battered wall, he said: “What utter whoreson could have come up with something so twisted?”

Perhaps it was this that dragged me to the edge of true torment: feeling myself to be playing a part in our downfall. Then one day I saw a sign for which I’d been hoping for a long while: buckets being passed over the top of a parapet. They were bailing water from the trench.

I’d designed the trench lines to go near the sea, hoping they’d flood. Jimmy’s sappers, trying to dig, suddenly found themselves inundated with salt water. Seeing the buckets, I exploded with glee. I stood up above the rampart and shouted: “Have that! Drown, you rats!”

Ballester yanked me back down. “Lieutenant colonel!” he said, railing at me once I had taken cover again.

I remember that being an extraordinary moment. Why? Because of what I saw in Ballester’s eyes: myself.

Until that moment he’d viewed me as someone reliable but lacking in spirit, skittish, and overly cautious. That day saw the culmination of an insane transmutation in each of us. Ballester, a responsible person, in pay of the government, and Lieutenant Colonel Zuviría, a machine, immersed in our murderous task. Yes, the look we shared then lasted a good few moments.

But if the days were hellish, words cannot describe the nights. Once the third parallel had been established, we were sent out on night sorties more often, and they were bloodier than ever. How could I possibly not take part? I knew every nook and cranny of my trench. My presence was crucial in guiding my fellow soldiers. Combat in the pitch black is always a muddled thing, nothing more so, with grenades, knives, and bayonets in a maze of a thousand ditches and branches.

Yes, the night skirmishes were fought with unprecedented ferocity. We’d set out just as it grew dark or, for variation, before dawn. At first I thought Ballester would be in his element in this kind of encounter. Under cover of dark, he could enact the lowest instincts of man, which consists of killing and then running away. The opposite turned out to be true. Those nights ennobled Ballester to the same extent that they made a savage of me.

Swiftness and time efficiency are key in any sortie. The assault squad’s only aim was to push as far into the trench as possible, then to dig in and hold off the enemy, while, at their back, a second wave sabotaged other parts. Then they’d both fall back, trying to lose as few men along the way as they could.

A signal would be given (something other than a whistle, which the enemy would hear), and we’d run out to the trench, trying to stay low to the ground and silent. Their third parallel was so close by now that it was relatively easy to reach. However watchful the enemy was, we’d be upon them in seconds. Inside the trench, the strangest kind of combat would then commence. First slitting the guard’s throat, then, within minutes, securing part of the trench. The darkness of the night, the depths in which we had to maneuver, and the narrowness of the trench, all made it impossible to see anyone, though there were voices aplenty — howls of entreaty and rage. Whistles being blown by Bourbon officers, five or ten different languages being spoken. Our aims on these lightning attacks were to destroy sapping machinery, flood the trench floor and wreck the cannons. And there was good old Zuvi, directing the destruction. Of the cannons, above all.

Our men would climb all over the cannons like monkeys. One would hold a foot-long nail against the fuse entry point, and the other would pound it with a hammer. The cannon would be immobilized; when the enemy retook the terrain, it would be useless. Where possible, we’d steal their tools. The second wave of men was to follow behind, and when they had gathered a good amount of ammunition, including shovels and mattocks, we’d retreat.

We’d occasionally surprise sappers in the trench, and they wouldn’t put up any resistance. They’d crowd together, down on their knees, hands raised imploringly to the sky, begging for their lives. The flashes of gunfire, the momentary radiance of grenade explosions here and there, lit up their eyes. The last thing they’d experience would be a typically nightmarish scene: fleeing through the night, boxed in by walls sunk in the earth, reaching a dead end. A pitiless enemy coming after them. The best thing was not to look them in the eye.

“Shoot, Ballester, and be quick about it!” was the order I gave. “Kill them and move forward!”

In August 1714, neither side was taking prisoners. What would be the point? The bitterness we felt overcame us all. Falling back, we wouldn’t be able to take our wounded with us. Anyone left behind would be knifed to death by the counterattackers. And in the early hours of the following day, the cadavers would be flung over the front of the trench, and from up on the ramparts, we’d watch them rot in the August sun. A mad time. Everything had grown so dark, we could no longer recognize ourselves.

Anyway, to put aside the darkness for a moment. As an example of le Mystère’s constant sense of humor, even when things were at their goriest, here is an anecdote from August 3 of that year.

I’d just gone in to see Don Antonio, my black hair whitened with ash and fragments of rubble. I was interrupted before I began my report, as in came a battalion of Black Pelts — senior priests, that is. They were there to present a Directive for the Assuaging of Divine Wrath.

The Black Pelts have always done a good line in sarcasm, so the only way to take it was as a not very funny joke. Read for yourselves the recipe they’d cooked up to bring about divine mediation and to liberate the city:

— Permanently put an end to street theater and comedies

Expel all gypsies from the city

Gather up the abandoned children which at this time swarm about in our streets

Do something about the profane, costly manners of the people of Barcelona

Bring back the veneration and respect of the temples

Hail Marys to be carried out in public places throughout the city

That Directive for the Assuaging of Divine Wrath plays in my memory as the perfect conjunction of all that is hypocritical and bizarre. The shelling had long since put an end to street theater, and no one had the energy to go and watch, or take part in, comedies. The poor gypsies, forever scorned, had seen the war as an opportunity to confront the stigma surrounding them: The majority of the drummers in the army had their dark faces. And if children were swarming the devastated streets, like my Anfán, it was because they were looking for food. As for “profane, costly manners,” what world were they living in? Our colorful, joyful city had for a long time been deformed and gray. On top of which, what possible link could there be between a siege in progress, divine favor, and silk skirts?

Don Antonio said he was in full agreement with them on every count. The next thing was that he sent them packing, using very florid language. They couldn’t have been happier.

Jimmy was a true Coehoornian. I couldn’t believe he’d taken so long to begin the assault. The trench wasn’t complete, sure enough, but what did that matter to someone who followed Coehoorn’s principles? In his hands, the Attack Trench (as my stay in the Mas Guinardó had told me) was nothing but a political instrument. The ramparts had been breached; he had a large, well-disciplined army at his disposal; and he scorned the “rebels,” scoundrels, for the larger parts, with very few trained troops among them.

So I failed to understand why the assault was taking so long to begin. My thoughts in designing the trench had been informed in large part by Jimmy’s tendencies. A premature attack would put us at an advantage. And there he was, to my dismay, holding his troops back. A strange duel because, even while Jimmy’s cannonballs were raining down, even as I was flinging myself to the ground to shelter behind the battlements, I was begging him: “Come on Jimmy, come on. Attack at last.”

The night of August 11, one of the hottest I can remember, found me behind the walls of Portal Nou. The majority of the militia went bare-chested. I made my way to the most forward position, where the remains of a wall stood like a gigantic corroded tusk, from there looking out at the Bourbons. I had a Coronela man with me, sent by the bastion commander to protect me.

“Quiet!” I said. “Do you not hear that?”

A hammering — thousands of mattocks and hammers. My Bazoches-sharpened hearing meant I could make them out, in spite of them covering the tools with cloth to muffle the sound.

I dashed back to the rearguard, not stopping until I found Don Antonio. I was gasping, having sprinted all the way.

“Carpentry, Don Antonio,” I said. “We’ve heard carpentry from their front line. They’re putting in the assault platforms, there’s nothing else it can be.”

Don Antonio showed no sign of emotion. I remember how he nodded, as though hearing happy news about an old friend. He looked me in the eye, seeking confirmation of the news. Still panting, I said: “They’re coming. It’s the general assault.”

11

To help form an idea of the battle that took place on the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth of August, I here include a group of illustrations.

The below is the Saint Clara bastion and the large breach that had been opened by Jimmy’s cannons. The moat, full of rubble dislodged by the shelling, would be easy to traverse. The advance guard was just across from us, positioned on the “gentlemen.”

All we could do was create a line of defense inside the bastions themselves. Protecting this exposed line would be suicide, so ten feet or so behind the breaches, we erected barricades. These were of stone and cement, as solid as we were able to make them, and up to chest height.

One of Saint Clara’s few advantages was the Saint Joan tower, a tall, narrow construction behind and to the right of the bastion. Two light cannons had been stationed on it throughout the siege — light but very precise. The height of the tower gave it an excellent shooting angle. Saint Joan harrowed the Bourbons endlessly as they went about their trench works. They developed a loathing for the tower and sent endless cannonballs up at it.

To help people understand the violence of the fighting, I here include three prints of the Saint Joan tower. The first shows what it was like originally, and the second what state it was in on the eve of August 12. (It was so damaged that we’d had to remove the two cannons a few days earlier, as it was on the verge of collapsing.) The last plate is a re-creation of what was left of the tower after the siege.

The artist took considerable license. The tower, for example, wasn’t square but round, and at this point in the siege, the ramparts were in a far worse state. The prints may not be totally accurate, but they’re instructive all the same.

At dawn on August 12 I was up on Saint Clara. The imminent attack meant I hadn’t had a moment’s sleep. Those sons of whores, knowing that we knew something was afoot, spent the whole steamy night setting off false alarms. And it was my job to raise the men when the real attack came.

A fine task! Raising the alarm in the city was no easy job. Men were not so much worn out as utterly exhausted. And some officer pissing his pants, rousing the garrison for no good reason, was the last thing they needed. Consider, too, that ours wasn’t a professional army but a bunch of civilians with rifles slung over their shoulders. Any alarm would wrench them from their homes, from their beds and their wives’ embraces. Jimmy’s idea was exactly this: to unnerve the defenders. As I say, the night was one long series of ruses: suddenly, in the pitch dark, trumpet blasts and drumming, and you thought an entire army was pouring down on your head. But nothing happened. Nothing. A few minutes later, there would be a pointless volley of rifle fire. But, counter to expectation, no battalions of grenadiers emerged out of their trenches, no infantry with bayonets mounted, no one. No one. I spent the night gauging the tiniest sounds and thinking of Bazoches: “As long as you are alive, you must pay attention. And as long as you pay attention, you’ll stay alive.”

At around seven in the morning, a silence came down, a calm so absolute that the absence of noise itself was suspicious. I dashed over and vaulted the first barricade. Then, creeping forward, I dropped down and poked my head over the breach. And what I saw, for all that it was the height of summer, chilled me to the bone.

Hundreds of men were emerging from the “gentlemen.” French grenadiers were chosen for their stature, and these were the very tallest of that class of soldier. In place of their usual weapons, unreal sight, they were wearing metal breastplates and brandishing twelve-foot pikes. Just behind this armored urchin came grenadiers, hundreds and hundreds of grenadiers. Ten full companies, at the very least, making their way to the Saint Clara and Portal Nou bastions.

The moat became an ant run of white uniforms, clambering over the rubble in perfect formation. The slope gave way so easily under their feet that it also put you in mind of a herd of elephants parading over gravel.

“This is the end,” I said to myself. The cream of the French army was upon us, and all we had to take them on were two Coronela companies, the swordsmiths and the cotton dealers. Fewer than two hundred men, all told.

I ran back the way I’d come, hurdling the barricade. I went and found the commander of the bastion, Lieutenant Colonel Jordi Bastida. “It’s the general assault, Bastida!” I cried. “They’re lining up!”

Just then we heard an explosion over to our left. The ground trembled. A column of black smoke mushroomed up over the neighboring Portal Nou. The Bourbons had exploded a mine.

“Don Antonio must be informed!” I said, agitated.

Bastida shook me off with disdain. “Well, you’d better go and tell him, then!”

Jordi Bastida was one of our heroes. In 1709 he’d been responsible for repelling the Bourbon assault on Benasque, a small settlement in the Pyrenees. If he’d been in my shoes, have no doubt, he would have interpreted “Well, you’d better go and tell him, then!” to mean, send a messenger; Bastida never would have considered abandoning his post, least of all when a mine had gone off, sending shock waves through the entire city. But I, of course, was not Bastida, and off I ran. And as I ran, I felt sure I’d never see the man alive again.

The Bourbons came at Saint Clara and Portal Nou simultaneously. The latter had just as few men defending it, the tailor and the cup maker companies. But overall, Portal Nou hadn’t had it as bad as Saint Clara; it could count on covering fire from either side, and its breaches were not so severe. As for the subterranean mine, it hadn’t been well positioned: It took out the forward edge of the pentagon, whereas if the Antwerp butcher had calculated properly and placed it a little farther forward, the entire fortification would have been blown sky-high. Imagine that — could someone possibly have fiddled with the numbers and distances in the plans?

Portal Nou was under Colonel Gregorio de Saavedra y Portugal. (I imagine he was Portuguese, with a surname like that.) For a few long minutes, his tailors and cup makers found themselves blinded by a thick cloud of black smoke. It rained clods of earth and rubble. They must have thought the world had come to an end. But the error in the calculations meant that the vast majority would come away unscathed. And Saavedra, who was a veteran officer, promptly sent his men into the gap.

Which bright Bourbon spark came up with the idea of returning to the time when pikemen were in force, I don’t know. (Years later, Jimmy assured me it hadn’t been him, but bearing in mind the disaster that took place, and his tendency to never tell the truth, his wanting to deny responsibility would make sense.)

Militiamen from each bastion converged in the breaches and began firing their rifles dementedly. They had covering fire from the ramparts above and were camouflaged by the screen of smoke from the exploded mine below. And the attackers came so thick and fast that they just needed to shoot into the mass of them. The first to fall, logically enough, were the men with the pikes. They were the most strapping men, and their armor was too heavy, and as they went rolling back down the slope they took dozens of others with them.

In the first part of this book, I said a little about the horror of a grenadier attack. I didn’t think it necessary to specify at that point that one doesn’t need to be a grenadier to use a grenade, and that in Barcelona, we had thousands upon thousands of grenades. A deluge of those black balls now came pouring down on the attackers. That the opposition was so tightly packed together made it many times more effective. At certain points, some of the defenders simply lit a single fuse to one of the grenades in a sack and threw the whole thing. But in spite of the carnage, the Bourbons still made headway.

Meanwhile, good old Zuvi sprinted to find Don Antonio again. I didn’t have to go far to find him. He was behind the area under attack, with officers and intermediaries bustling around him. There was nothing I could tell him that he didn’t already know, which I found somewhat humiliating.

One of the officers awaiting Don Antonio’s orders was Marià Bassons, a law professor who had taken up the position of captain in the Coronela. A small man with a round head and his spectacles firmly in place, even there in the midst of battle, Bassons was one of these men who keep old age at bay by being phlegmatic, making observations on the world as though they themselves are not a part of it.

“Ah, Lieutenant Colonel Zuviría,” he said, peering at me through his little glasses. “Tell me, any developments on your legal tribulations? Did you sort it out with those Italians?”

I was out of breath from running, and above our heads, missiles of all calibers were flying to and fro, and Bassons wanted to know about my pending trial. Someone ought to have pointed out to him that most of the courts had been destroyed by the bombardment. I never quite worked out if he was senile or one of these stoic creatures that society props up, as long as there’s someone saying it’s possible to prop them up.

His company, made up of law students, was nearby, sheltering from stray bullets as they awaited orders. One came over and, both eager and respectful, asked Bassons: “Doctor, are we to attack?”

The law students’ company was easily recognizable. Since they were at university, that meant they all came from good families. When enlisting, they each bought themselves not one but two or even three of those uniforms with their long blue jackets. They’d get one dirty during a shift, then have another waiting for them, one of their servants having cleaned it. They struck up an agreement with the tailor company, who would patch their holes for them. I must admit, they never filled me with confidence. The only thing they were any good for was parades, because they scrubbed up so well in their immaculate uniforms with their wide yellow cuffs. The civilians, up on their balconies, found encouragement from seeing them, due to their tendency to confuse a pretty army with a hardened one. My qualms were based on the fact that war and the arts have never been happy bedfellows. “They’ll bolt as soon as the first shot is fired” was my view.

Bassons, who always acted like a father with his students, clapped the young soldier on the back. “Aviat, fill meu, aviat,” he said. Soon, my boy, very soon. “And remember: Nihil metuere, nisi turpem famam.” The only thing to be feared is ill renown.

Old Bassons had enlisted, like many of the people of Barcelona, almost without having to think. For them, war was part of your civic duty, somewhere between paying your taxes and taking part in carnival. Once the Crida went out, the students made it clear to the government that their professor was the only man they’d serve under. The Red Pelts, always very understanding (to the upper classes), made Bassons a captain. (Possibly they worried that if they did otherwise, the students would drag them out and stone them.) In return, Bassons couldn’t have felt more proud of the youngsters under his command. Mon Dieu, quel bon esprit de corps!

The young soldier went back over to the troop, and Bassons couldn’t help but sigh condescendingly. “Youth, always so impatient!” This he said as though my rank somehow meant I wasn’t also young.

“Storm,” I know, is very overused as a description for battle, but there can be few better ways to describe the situation we were in. Clouds of ash and stone chips came tumbling from the bastions as the cannonballs continued to fall. In our positions just below the ramparts, pulverized fragments rained down on our heads. I didn’t want to imagine what it was like inside Saint Clara. With a little luck, I thought, I’ll be forgotten about. Ha! I should have been so lucky! One of Villarroel’s officers came rushing over: “Zuviría! Is it right you’ve been up on Saint Clara? You’re to show Captain Bassons the way — the students are going as backup for Bastida. Tell them they must hold until further reinforcements arrive!”

I didn’t even have time to patch together an excuse.

“Got that?” cried the man. “Hold the position! Hold, or all will be lost!”

I wanted to say no, no, he couldn’t send a collection of rosy-cheeked infants to Saint Clara, that the Bourbons would brush them aside in seconds, and it would be of no practical use in the defense of the city. But that would have been to offend Bassons and his hundred or so bluecoats, who were already trotting over. Very enthusiastic about getting themselves killed!

What else could I do but take them to Saint Clara? We crossed the narrows of the gullet, we hurried up the infernal steps. And dear Lord, what a scene we found!

Compared with the deck on Saint Clara at that moment, Golgotha would resemble an English country garden. The surface of that irregular pentagon was entirely carpeted with dead and wounded bodies. A great many of them were close to death, unable to raise an arm to ask for help. All those writhing bodies made me physically sick. Fishermen keep their buckets full of dozens of worms, and you see them squirming around, waiting for the hook to be stuck through them. It was like that.

The Bourbons had taken the first barricade, which we’d erected to encircle the breach, and as a place from which to fire at the invaders when they began slipping through. Take another look at the plate. Now that they were installed there, they were firing on the second barricade, where the small numbers of survivors from Bastida’s swordsmiths and cotton dealers were positioned. Twenty or thirty out of the original two hundred remained, and they were firing and reloading ceaselessly, unable to do anything about the fallen men between the two barricades. They’d held off the Bourbon assaults, and had even carried out a number of counterattacks, retaking the first barricade several times. Two hundred versus a thousand, perhaps two thousand!

As the students deployed themselves behind the second barricade, I caught sight of Bastida, who was down. His adjutant, who had propped him up against the battlement wall, was weeping. There was nothing he could do but dab his commander’s cheeks with a sponge. Bastida was gazing up at the sky, his eyes half vacant and his mouth open. Kneeling down beside him, I counted six bullet wounds on his body.

I know I can be mean-hearted from time to time, but in that moment, I can assure you, I felt awful at having sidled off. I’d had dealings with Bastida before and found him an honest, decent man. And now here he was lying on the floor with six bits of lead swimming around inside him. Taking his hands in mine, I whispered to him: “Jordi, Jordi, Jordi. . ”

He tried to speak, but I couldn’t understand. He gurgled incomprehensibly, the din making everything difficult to hear anyway. It was a miracle he was still breathing.

“Why hasn’t he been taken to the hospital?” I yelled at his adjutant.

“He didn’t want to be taken, sir!” was the answer. “He gave express orders! There are so few of us that unless we all bear arms, we’ll be overrun.”

“The student company has come,” I said. “Now take him!”

Bastida grabbed my left wrist. His eyes bulged, and the look he gave me — one of stunned lucidity — will stay with me to the day I die. I put my ear to his lips. If he wanted to curse me, I deserved it. His chest contracted, and instead of words, red bubbles cascaded from his mouth. I felt the warmth of his blood spilling over my ear and stood back. He was carried off. He died early the next morning in Saint Creu hospital, after long struggles.

The men on the barricades, separated by that groaning mass of bodies sprawled across the cobbles, continued to exchange fire. More and more of the Bourbon soldiers gathered on the beachhead of the bastion. Once there were enough of them, they would come charging against the baby-faced student company, the bastion would be theirs, and with it, the city.

People unfamiliar with the art of engineering wouldn’t have seen that outcome so clearly. The students would load their rifles squatting behind the parapet, turn and aim a single shot over the top, and then kneel back down with a ramrod in one hand and the pouch of gunpowder in the other, again loading their rifles. In their minds, as long as they applied themselves diligently, the result of the battle would not be in doubt. The good Lord would guide their bullets in the same way He did their studies, rewarding constancy, effort, and dedication with a deserving triumph. They failed to understand that behind the small semicircular barricade the enemy was controlling, Jimmy was sending in more and more reinforcements, entire battalions making their way along the trenches from the back. A devastating pool of energy that, at the drop of a hat, would overwhelm anything and everything in its way.

I ought to be clear that, at the time, finding myself at the center of proceedings, I didn’t have a clear sense at all of what was going on. Over the following days, I managed to form a general idea.

Jimmy had attacked the bastions of Portal Nou and Saint Clara at the same time. As I’ve said, he planned to take them, and after that, the city would beg for mercy or else be put to the sword. Siege over. That was if everything went exactly according to plan. When the resistance turned out to be more determined than expected, Jimmy went out onto his balcony at Mas Guinardó and stood by for the messengers to brief him on where things had gotten to.

The first reports perturbed him. The news wasn’t bad, it was disastrous: Incredibly, the push for Portal Nou had been repelled.

Jimmy felt annoyed, he felt inconvenienced, but he did not feel discouraged. He had meditated at length on the attack, had an alternative strategy, and proceeded to put it into effect.

In reality, Jimmy didn’t need to take control of two bastions — as per les règles, one was enough. Portal Nou hadn’t gone well, so he decided to throw everything he had at Saint Clara. Where good old Zuvi was, in other words, cowering behind the second barricade.

While Jimmy gave the order for the reserve battalions — all of them — to make their way to Saint Clara, Dr. Bassons continued going back and forth along the parapet, exhorting his students. Seemingly oblivious of the danger, strolling around with his hands clasped behind his back as though it were daisy chains rather than bullets flying around, and spouting phrases in Latin. Don Antonio had ordered him to contain the Bourbons, and his lads were making an excellent job of precisely that. He saw no further; the calculated, catastrophic forces about to be unleashed were beyond his comprehension. Coming in my direction and seeing me kneeling close up against the battlement, keeping my head well down, Bassons stopped and, uncritically, more as a suggestion than as a recrimination, pointed out: “Lieutenant Colonel, officers are supposed to set an example.”

“Dr. Bassons!” I cried. “Get down!”

According to Bassons’s rudimentary military understanding, an officer had to stay on his feet in the face of enemy fire. Truly, he didn’t want for courage, the ignoramus. But we engineers always put staying alive above honor. Our lot was to build fortresses, the point of which was to provide protection, not leave people exposed, and unlike in open battles, in sieges anyone who doesn’t hide is a fool. Therein one of the unending sources of mutual disdain between engineers and soldiers.

Zuvi himself had designed and led the construction of the barricades on the Saint Clara yard. High enough to provide protection from enemy fire, but at the same time, with gaps to allow rifles to be poked between the stockades and fired, and low enough that men could get back over in case of a counterattack. Bassons wasn’t a tall man, quite the opposite, but his head — upon which, absurdly, he still wore a wig — was visible over the top. That large, round head was a perfect target for any sniper, and we were in the midst of a firefight as constant as it was chaotic.

“Please, Dr. Bassons!” I again begged him. “Take cover!”

But I was wrong: My warning merely encouraged him to draw his students’ attention. Quite a sight: a lieutenant colonel down on his knees, Captain Bassons pontificating on the superiority of intellect and civic pride. He declaimed between bursts of gunfire: “Our grandfathers’ grandfathers, and their grandfathers before them, and as far ago as five generations past, lived on the Pyrenean peaks. And they lived like beasts, herding together without order, and without God.”

“What are you going on about?” I said, trying to cut him off. “Enough of the sermons!”

He paid me no mind. He was possessed by culture in the same way the preachers are filled by the Holy Spirit. “But then a day came,” he said, undaunted by the cascades of bullets flying by, “and they saw a rich country spread out beneath them, a prosperous place for anyone who knew how to work the land, valleys and plains perfect for human civilization. Our ancestors repelled the Moors — that foul-smelling bunch! And it took them generations to do it, establishing their laws, religion, and customs in a new land they named Catalonia.”

What nonsense was this? Plus the fact that his rapt students had slowed their firing in order to listen to him. Jumping to my feet, I barked out the order: “Maintain fire! Shoot, load, and shoot!” They didn’t listen; my authority was nothing next to that of Marià Bassons, their beloved professor.

Bassons the buffoon carried on with his discoursing: “They created a new order, settling Catalonia and going on to liberate Valencia and Mallorca, populating the lands with our people. And they did not suppress the natives, as is usual in conquered territories, and as is Castile’s approach. Rather, they established sibling kingdoms, which, as such, were forever to be our equals and beloved by us. A shared religion, a shared tongue, a shared common law, and each with its own parliament. And what was that law, supreme, absolutely free, and unshakable? Always to serve the king who serves his people.” He suddenly became excited, shaking a fist in the air. “And now some French pretender to the Spanish throne wants to trample a thousand years of Catalan liberty because of what some Castilian wrote in his will! Are we going to let them? Oi que no, nois?” Not a chance, right, lads?

I remember the way he shouted while shaking his fist, as though rattling a tambourine. I had to bellow to make myself heard over the din: “Dr. Bassons, would you mind getting down?”

I’ll never know whether the buffoon heard. He was near enough that I was able to grab him by the tails of his jacket to force him to take cover. But too late. In that instant I saw a white line score the sky, a little comet’s tail of smoke behind it. A concave slice of metal, the size of a serving tray, flew toward us and into the side of Bassons’s head, embedding in it as though his cranium were soft cheese.

Where had this projectile issued from? No one will ever know. Most likely, it was the remains of a cannonball that had shattered upon impact with the Saint Joan tower behind us to the right. The fragments had flown off in all directions, and the largest nestled in Bassons’s head.

He toppled onto me, his head a bloody mess. His body spasmed briefly and then was still. His dead hands were clenched, pawlike. My face was splashed with so much blood, it must have looked like I had measles. I pushed Bassons off me, and before his body hit the ground, almost all of his hundred students, it seemed, had come and crowded around. “Dr. Bassons!”

Panting, I wiped the blood from my face and tried to recover from that sudden death. As I puffed and gasped, they congregated around their professor and me. A collective sobbing started up.

“This is war,” I said, trying to console them. “Return to your positions.”

The students loved Bassons with that especial, fanatical love that exists between student and teacher. In their shock, they were close to insubordination.

“To your positions,” I ordered them, shoving them back, “spread out along the barricade, and fire, damn it, maintain fire! If you let up, they’ll gather and charge!”

Now, look, I’ve never been one to glorify military actions — partly because I’ve seen so few that have been glorious. Most great military feats are little more than rats being corralled, blind panic. When it comes to battle, men kill to avoid being killed, and that is all. Then a poet shows up, or a historian, or a historian of a poetic bent, and takes that thrusting, thrashing frenzy and puffs it up, imbues it with ideas of valor, calls it glory. And yet, and yet: What happened that day belied my whole logic.

Grief became hate, a repeated cry of “You bastards!” starting up as they fired, loaded, and fired. But to load a rifle, you need a calm head, and their blood was boiling. One among them, the most upset, lost patience; his hands trembled in rage, and the powder poured everywhere apart from down the barrel of his rifle. He let out a strange, female-sounding cry and was suddenly mounting his bayonet and vaulting over the barricade.

I had time only to shout after him: “Eh? Where are you going? Get back here!”

But he wasn’t listening. Maddened, he went screaming toward the Bourbon barricade, bayonet at the ready.

“That’s it, at them!” some imbecile shouted, encouraged by the mad student’s example. “Avenge Don Marià!”

And after him they went! The whole hundred or so of them, following in their comrade’s footsteps. Naturally, I tried to hold them back: “Don’t, don’t! You’ll be slaughtered, the lot of you!”

It wasn’t just compassion that made me try to stop them. I would have to be the one to tell Don Antonio, our good shepherd of soldiers, that I’d lost the sheep in my care, that they’d gone wandering into a mass suicide. Insults, threats, physically trying to hold them back, all useless. They went over the top, every last one of them. Not me, clearly. I stood with my back against the battlement for a few moments, head in my hands. The only person left was me, me and the body of Bassons the buffoon. Mon Dieu, quelle catastrophe!

I turned to watch the massacre through a chink in the barricade. And to this day, I cannot believe the sights I saw.

Spurred on by a very intimate rage, the students covered the distance in the blink of an eye. The Bourbons didn’t even have time to unleash an organized volley. There was a scattering of shots, and three or four of the students went down. When they were halfway across, one shouted out the old Barcelonan students’ harangue: “Stone them! Stone them!” And that same student stopped in his tracks, striking a flint and putting it to the fuse of a sack full of grenades, before launching it over the top of the enemy barricade. And there we have it: The more loutish a civic tradition, the more use it is to a patriot.

The grenades sent up a cluster of bodies on the other side of the ramparts. The mad youth leading the charge hadn’t even stopped to light his grenade but ran on, hoarse from yelling, bayonet out in front. The others followed him, and when they reached the barricade’s first wall, they scaled it and began firing and thrusting their rifles into the bodies of the men they found below them.

Beyond, hundreds of Bourbon soldiers were awaiting the order to begin the assault. An attack from the defenders — that was the last thing they were expecting. They were so tightly crammed together that the majority couldn’t free their arms to bring out their rifles and fire back. Over the students went, sinking their bayonets into the heads, chests, and backs of their enemies. They were so crazed, and the Bourbons so vulnerable, that the latter panicked and fled. They plunged pell-mell into the moat and back in the direction of the cordon, with the demented, braying students hard on their heels.

Once this impossible victory had become reality, I, too, followed after them, crouching low. In the stretch of the bastion between the barricades, my feet crunched over dead and wounded bodies; you couldn’t move for them. As I say: To this day, I fail to understand how a handful of scholars could make a thousand or so French grenadiers turn and flee.

I managed, thank heavens, to stop the students from continuing and trying to take on the whole Bourbon encampment. I was helped by the exhaustion that took hold of them, the plumbing of the depths of body and spirit that follows a life-or-death charge. The sound of orders from an officer brought them to their senses again. The first barricade had been taken, and now they needed to man it, reestablishing the situation as it had been before the Bourbon attack. They came meekly back up. Perhaps, as I’ve suggested elsewhere, because he who returns from a place of madness is more surprised than any by the aberration committed.

I had seen things before then that called into question the teachings at Bazoches. But the students’ charge went further: It utterly negated reason. Vauban never would have tolerated such an action, for the inevitable loss of life, and for the fact that it was bound to fail. And yet, and yet, incomprehensible as it was, there was I, standing on a mound of dead French grenadiers and giving orders to the babes who had killed them.

The lad who had initiated the charge had survived. He stood there with a very faraway look in his eyes. The front of his uniform was soaked in blood, top to bottom, and he was gawping at his bayonet, also stained red. He seemed not to understand, as though all the bodies had just appeared and were nothing to do with him. I shook him by the shoulders: “Noi, noi, are you all right?”

He didn’t recognize me. His mouth opened and shut, and his gaze was otherworldly. “Dr. Bassons,” he said. And throughout the rest of the day, he was in another world, and kept on calling me after his departed professor.

12

Jimmy, of course, reduced the human tragedy to numbers. And for a marshal, a number, so long as it is limited to an amount he can justify to his superiors, remains nothing but a number. He could absorb those initial losses, he reasoned, and the next morning, he began the assault again. He threw everything at the battered Saint Clara bastion.

For him, installed on the balcony of his Guinardó country house, watching the battle was no hardship. For the poor beetles of each army fighting over control of Saint Clara, it was like a recurring nightmare: Not twelve hours had passed since the charge of the students, and the situation was exactly as it had been previously, the Bourbons sheltering behind the first barricade, which they had retaken, and our forces behind the second.

Throughout August 13, there was a succession of attacks and counterattacks across the bastion yard. We were one step from the abyss; one step back, just one, and Saint Clara would be in Jimmy’s possession. And once he had the bastion, the entire city would inevitably fall. Being the sly fox that he was, Jimmy sent false attacks at other points along the ramparts. They were obviously nothing but feints, but they still meant Don Antonio had to disperse his forces — precisely Jimmy’s aim. The key position was protected by no more than a thin screen of men. The city was depending on this handful of combatants, worn out and choking on rifle smoke.

At the very center of the bastion was a small cabin, a munitions store whose construction I myself had overseen. Usually, a good bastion will have gunpowder storerooms underground, but Saint Clara was a woeful bastion, irregular and precarious, and had no basement. In the uproar of battle, prodigious quantities of gunpowder would be spilled. Obviously, the slightest scrap of anything alight would mean catastrophe. Even professional soldiers have trouble reloading a rifle with utter accuracy, and civilian militia more so. To point out the dangers to them, to insist they not rush as they loaded and reloaded, would have been as absurd as asking a child playing with a vase not to break it. This was why I thought it important to build this shelter, to protect the munitions from any stray sparks, and the consequent disaster. If you take a moment to flick back a few pages, you’ll see the said cabin on the plate depicting the battle map.

So the day was spent vying for ownership of this insignificant shack halfway between the barricades, an outcrop in the center of the cobbled yard. Now the Coronela would make a push for it, now the Bourbon forces. Unlike Jimmy, Don Antonio was there on the front line, moving between the most perilous positions. The sight of him was a boost to the troops. I can still see him slapping men on the back, chatting with the soldiers, more like a father than a high-up military man.

“My boys,” he’d say, “the least of you is worth as much to me as a general. How fortunate I am to have been allowed to lead you.”

A moment came when I said to myself: “Enough now.” It was well, very well, for him to set an example of fearlessness and self-sacrifice, like generals from antiquity (of course, we saw neither hide nor hair of Casanova), but we hardly wanted our commander in chief to end up like Professor Bassons.

What I couldn’t understand was Don Antonio’s strategy. Jimmy had a foothold on Saint Clara, meaning the bastion system was no longer to our advantage. Hours passed, and Don Antonio would regularly relieve the half-annihilated forces manning the different outposts, but never initiate any counterattacks. This meant simply accepting the series of bloody clashes in which we’d always be on the losing end. Jimmy was in a position to send wave after wave of men along the trenches to Saint Clara, and to evacuate his wounded; slow and arduous, yes, and the toll considerable, but we were so hugely outnumbered that sooner or later, they would gather together enough men to overrun us.

All the officers, to a man, knew how close we were to the abyss and that time was against us. Lose the second barricade, and it would be good night. The attitude of these officers said everything about the atmosphere in the city: Not a single one was exhorting Don Antonio to try and discuss terms. Far from it! There was a group of captains and colonels constantly asking Don Antonio to sanction a sortie, to let them try and dislodge the Bourbons from the first barricade. From the Catalans, “si us plau, si us plau”; from the pro-Charles Castilians who had changed sides, it was “por favor, por favor”; and you’d even hear a few Germans with their “bitte, bitte, herr Ánton!”

I can still see myself, standing back as officers swarmed around poor Don Antonio, who rejected their ideas one after another. They knew how desperate our situation was. And yet there they were, begging permission to carry out a frontal attack on a position held by several battalions. It was all Don Antonio could do to keep them at bay.

And so it went on until nightfall. The skirmishes continued in the same ferocious vein. Across the city, the bells tolled the warning alarm and didn’t abate at sundown. The area where the attack was concentrated stayed brightly lit; we sent up flares so we could see what we were aiming at; the flashes of rifle fire also lit the darkness, like thousands of blinking glowworms. At around four in the morning, I left Saint Clara to go and discuss with Costa which cannons to bring to the bastion, as the embrasures were now in effect. A brief dialogue that saved my life.

I had ordered an old sergeant major, once the general assault was under way, to empty the munitions cabin at the center of the disputed yard. I thought the Bourbons were certain to make gains, and it was imperative that they not seize the contents. What I didn’t know was that the old sergeant major had been one of the first to fall. That is, he hadn’t lived long enough to gather a group of carriers, go and open the padlocked door with its small firebreak strip of water across the entrance, and empty the store.

I find it amazing when I think how long it took for the catastrophe to come. All day long, each side vied for control of a building they had no idea was brimming with gunpowder, grenades, bullets, and pots and tins containing grapeshot. And nothing had happened. Le Mystère must have had a good chortle on our account that day.

One of the survivors later told me the story. Just after I’d left, four in the morning and darkest night, a cry had gone up of: “Forward, for Saint Eulalia, forward!” The Barcelonan troops had held out all that time and resisted their desire to counterattack; in their frustration, a number of them took the prompt of this insane anonymous voice. For the hundredth time, they reached the cabin, repelled the Bourbons who had gathered around it, and then halted before pressing on to the first barricade.

Behind the first assault line, you always had a few men going around with large straw baskets bearing ammunition, particularly grenades, to replenish the troops’ supply. At this point, after a day and half a night of constant skirmishing, the bastion yard was almost overflowing with dead bodies and scattered gunpowder. The place reeked of those two things.

Now, I was told, a number of the basket carriers sheltered behind the munitions cabin, and a spark fell from somewhere, setting fire to some gunpowder on the ground. The flame ran along a trail of gunpowder and came to two of the large baskets, which had been put down against the side of the cabin, both containing grenades. You can guess the next part.

I believe this to have been the second largest explosion I’ve witnessed in all my days. Costa and I were nowhere near Saint Clara and found our discussion interrupted as the shock waves threw us to the ground. Over six hundred feet away, we were. The eruption was red and bloomed upward like a flower. It was followed by an extended rumbling. Up went the flames, and up went the explosions, with half the city bathed in shards and fragments and rubble.

In a daze, I got to my knees. I looked over at Costa; his words came to me as though my head were underwater. I got up and set off for the bastion gullet, stumbling along in zigzags like a drunk.

Le Mystère, I’ll give it this much, does at least apportion its humor equally: Both sides suffered roughly the same losses. A little over seventy Coronela men were blown up along with the cabin, and while fewer Bourbons died, the damage was greater to them: Word quickly spread that the explosion had been a rebel mine.

Mines provoke almost uncontrollable terror. An assassin hidden under our feet could at any moment activate many thousands of pounds of explosives, as many as the mind can conceive. Yes, it was a simple accident, the kind that abounds in war, but the Bourbons fell back in droves. How ironic that the two sides, having fought tooth and nail for control of the Saint Clara yard, now abandoned their positions at the same time, as though an agreement had been struck.

The gullet — the entrance to the bastion on the city side — was very narrow precisely to prevent men ever fleeing en masse. There was a captain there, named Jaume Timor, and with his saber drawn, he was stopping anyone who could bear arms. “Quit Saint Clara and the city will be lost!” he roared.

Whole families fought side by side on Saint Clara. As great Herodotus said: “In peace, children bury their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to bury their children.” The siege of Barcelona went further, with some burying not only sons but also grandsons. I saw a neighbor of mine named Dídac Pallarès coming along the gullet and Timor standing aside. He had good reason — three good reasons, to be precise: Pallarès was carrying his three sons, all of them injured, in his arms. The skin on their faces was in red and black tatters; I remember one of them in particular, one whom Peret always owed a few sueldos. His were the worst injuries; the flesh on his jaw had come away completely, exposing the bone. It was still raining debris, and Don Antonio was in the vicinity, uttering consoling and encouraging words to the survivors. He and a number of officers tried to reinstate a modicum of order. Well, on this occasion, they didn’t manage it.

I was so dazed that I felt like I was seeing with my ears and hearing through my eyes. There were shreds of meat everywhere, remains similar to the formless gobbets you tend to see on the floor of an abattoir. I lifted my gaze. From the top of the bastions, the burning, howling bodies of Coronela men were falling after they leaped off the edge, as if the bastion were a burning ship. I saw all these things and then said to myself: “Ladies and gentlemen, enough. This is more than good old Zuvi can bear. To the hell with the city, the home country, and the constitution.” I turned on my heel and ran like a rabbit.

“Fear will rise up into your eyes,” I was told in Bazoches, “and do the looking on your behalf. Don’t let it.” Not bad in the context of a classroom. But when a power comes to bear that can make a bastion lurch and teeter like a paper boat, not even the memory of Bazoches could quash an individual’s self-preserving instinct. I wasn’t the only one who ran. Dozens of men had been pushed beyond their limits and were fleeing in all directions. I crossed the cutting and entered the city streets before being confronted by a huge crowd.

Women, in droves. They were holding their skirts clear as they ran — but in the opposite direction: toward the walls. Amelis was among them. “What’s happening, Martí, what’s happening?” she asked, but didn’t stop. They’d been drawn by the explosion, and the prevailing chaos had meant there was no one to stop them from reaching the front line. Those of us who had succumbed to panic and fled, now hesitated.

In my view, Barcelona’s rescue that night owed more to its women than Timor’s saber. We fugitives were deemed cowards, picaroons, eunuchs. Amelis halted and called back at me: “You mean you’re going to let the enemy enter?”

Allow me a moment’s reflection in place of memories: What ideal was it that motivated the people of Barcelona to keep on going throughout a yearlong siege? Their liberties and constitutions? No, what kept them there was that bond — heavenly or demonic, it matters not — that prevents a man from abandoning the spot he’s fighting on. Raw civilians, fourteen-year-old boys, sixty-year-old grandfathers, clung like limpets to the bastions. And why? I’ll suggest an answer: because of the overwhelming, unshakable force of the question: “What will people think?” When your whole city’s watching, it takes a lot of courage to be a coward.

Thus, even a prissy rat like Longlegs Zuvi went back to his post. And that whole night we resisted an irresistible force, and through the next morning, and come midday next, good old Zuvi’s nerves were utterly shredded, as was the case with the rest of the Coronela.

The center of Saint Clara was now a crater, a solemn gap clung to by what was left of the bastion’s five walls. The unutterably mad struggle was for possession of this gap. The hail of rifle volleys was unceasing. And still no offensive from Don Antonio. Throughout this period, Jimmy continued to smugly accumulate men on the first barricade. Time was on his side. He thought (as I did at the time) that Don Antonio had taken leave of his senses — or even his valor — and was relinquishing the defensive positions. Once enough Bourbon battalions had gathered behind the first barricade, there would be no way of stopping an onslaught from them. And there we were, doing nothing but holding the second barricade and firing from Portal Nou and the adjacent sections of the ramparts. A lot of noise but little else came of it: rounds upon rounds of bullets spent while the Bourbons kept their heads down behind the first barricade and in the trench, or came along the cut, digging in deeper and building their parapets higher with every hour that passed.

It had been hell maneuvering the three cannons up to the bastion. And rather than firing those cannons, the Mallorcans wouldn’t so much as peek out of the embrasures. As ever, it was as though they were fighting a separate battle from everyone else. They sat around on the bases of the cannons, drinking an abominable liquor from the Balearics — sharing it with none but themselves — and seeming removed from the bedlam surrounding them.

“For the love of God,” I said, “fire these cannons, blow up the barricade they’re holding! What are you waiting for?”

Their captain shook his head, his only concession being to mutter at me in his islander accent: “Ses ordres.” Orders.

There was a considerable stretch of ground between the end of their trench and the bastion because, as per good old Zuvi’s modifications to Verboom’s plan, the third parallel had been dug as far from the ramparts as possible.

I later learned that it had never been Don Antonio’s plan to take back the first barricade. Jimmy was too strong there, it would only have been a bloodbath, so Don Antonio was content to delay them. He waited until the last possible moment before launching his counterattack, anticipating some pause in the assault. Then and only then did he give an order, one that just three officers had been let in on.

Lowering the telescope, he called out in that booming Castilian voice of his: “Do it!”

A flare went up, turning red the thick smoke on and around the bastion and ramparts. The moment he saw this, Costa gave his signal, lowering an arm. I wasn’t nearby, but I believe I heard him shout something as well, and within an instant, each and every cannon and mortar began pounding the trenches, creating a barrier of flames.

We saw the explosions hitting the Bourbon lines, and the next two troops charging out from the garrison, one from the left and one from the right. (The arrows on the plate below indicate their trajectories.)

Two hundred previously selected men, under Lieutenant Colonel Tomeu and Colonel Ortiz, attacked each flank. And my God, what a mad dash that was.

They hurtled out alongside the third parallel, exposing themselves to fire from the trenches. Those four hundred had to be very fast to make the most of Costa’s barrage. They converged on the cut, some jumping down inside and others tipping the fajina parapets onto the heads of the enemy. Like this:

Ortiz was in charge of blocking off the cut on the side of the Bourbon encampment with the fajinas, and Tomeu’s men did the same on the city side, trapping the enemy in between.

This was one of the swiftest and most exact maneuvers I’ve ever seen carried out from a besieged position. If Costa hadn’t been a superior artilleryman, his cannons and mortars would have been the death of that four hundred. We watched as, having reached the cut, they shot their rifles down into it, annihilating the surprised Bourbons. I still have trouble banishing the memory of that underground wailing.

By the time Jimmy found out, it was too late. With Ortiz blocking the cut, there was no longer any use sending reinforcements.

As for the Bourbons already on Saint Clara, they saw what a sticky position they were in, with Tomeu behind them. And that was when the three cannons manned by the Mallorcans came into play: A large section of the first barricade sank, the brickwork beneath it pummeled so hard that it buckled inward and down.

With cannonballs coming from one side and rifle bullets riddling them from the other, the Bourbons scattered, leaping down into the moat below and sprinting past Tomeu’s position, trying to reach the trench. It goes without saying that Ortiz’s and Tomeu’s men mercilessly gunned them down at close range. The volleys from the rifles up on the Saint Joan tower also intensified, prompted by the sight of the stampede. And then the order came for those of us on the second barricade to charge the first and, finally, unopposed, retake it.

Such is war. In the time it takes to crack your knuckles, the tables turn, and a seemingly hopeless battle that was going nowhere turns into a rout for your enemy. More than four hundred French never made it back to their lines. No prisoners were taken.

I managed to make out a French official through the smoke, standing with his body half out of the third parallel, using his telescope to try to discern what was happening, clearly incredulous at the way the assault had just crumbled. Ballester happened to be next to me, and he was scanning around for a target.

“Give me that!” I said, grabbing his loaded rifle, aiming it at the officer with the telescope, and firing at that reckless figure. The bullet went through his neck, blood gushing out the other side. The man’s arms went up, like a pagan hailing an idol, and he fell backward into the trench. I remember the way his telescope, which he’d inadvertently flung upward, twirled around and around in the air. A not insignificant shot: The man I’d taken down was none other than Dupuy.

Still I shudder to think: In all of a yearlong siege, I fired one bullet, just one, and it turned out to be at Dupuy.

Seeing his troops coming pouring back, Jimmy was livid. He lowered his head and contained himself for a moment before exploding. The officers and commanders around him were made aware, in no uncertain terms, of how incompetent they were.

He stormed back into Mas Guinardó with his retinue behind him. He was even angrier than in the critical moments at Almansa.

“The position must be regained!” he howled, shaking his fists. “Even if it means losing the entire army! Or do we want Europe to hear how mighty France has been overturned by a group of rude civilians?”

His generals tried to calm him down, but Jimmy cursed them all. “Silence! I want a report from the horse’s mouth. Send me Brigadiers Sauvebouef and Duverger! And Marquis de Polastron!”

Not possible, they said: Sauvebouef and Duverger had both been lost during the assault. Of Polastron there was no word. Well, that was soon to come: Men of the Coronela, still in a frenzy, had decapitated poor Polastron, rammed his head down inside a cannon, and fired him at Mas Guinardó. Hearing that noise, everyone present hung his head. All except Jimmy, who went out on the balcony, there finding Polastron’s blackened, smoking head revolving on the balcony floor like a spinning top.

A number of officials appeared whom Jimmy had greater respect for, including Lieutenant Colonel La Motte. Injured, he hobbled in, face soiled and uniform in tatters. “Your Excellence,” he argued, “regaining a foothold on Saint Clara would cost us our best troops, a crippling number of casualties and sacrifices. Without reinforcements from France, we’ll gain no more than a few feet, and the cost will be terrible. . The filthy rebel canaille are up on the ramparts as we speak, their generals and magistrates are whipping them up, and they mock us with singing and jibes.”

All true. The regained positions were teeming with men and women and even some musicians, celebrating the victory. With very little decency, also true. A great display of bare buttocks turned in the direction of the enemy lines.

Even so, it took a report of the losses to change Jimmy’s mind. Numbers have the power to cool the most burning passion. In the Saint Clara attack alone, fifteen hundred men had been lost, making a total of five thousand since the beginning of work on the trench: the kind of figures that could no longer be argued away. Most disconcerting of all was the account of officers down. Among them, none other than Dupuy — though, as it turned out, he had survived my bullet through the neck. And there was something further, something Jimmy grasped all too well.

Unlike field battles, in any contest for fortified positions, men have stone and brick to protect them. In Barcelona, thousands upon thousands of bullets were fired, but few ever reached their marks, the bodies of the enemy. The artillery of either side, for their part, were constrained by having to avoid hitting their own men. This meant that bayonet charges were the prime cause of death — which shows, better than any speech ever could, how determined the “rebels” were. There was nothing to suggest that a further assault would be any less bloody or have a different outcome: Breaches stopped, the filthy rebel canaille again taking to the rampart tops to sing mock songs.

Jimmy never forgave Don Antonio for humbling him at Saint Clara that day. Having been denied victory, Jimmy now looked to point the finger. Verboom was called in. The Antwerp butcher knew the reason for the summons and began his defense before any attack could come. “I did say that the trench required further tweaking,” he said, “and that it meant the assault would be premature.”

But Verboom was wrong if he thought Jimmy would be the one to cross-examine him. The next person to speak was Dupuy, who had entered immediately after Verboom: “A bad engineer always blames his trench,” he said.

Dupuy was very weak due to the loss of blood, and he had large swathes of bandages around his neck. It was the fifteenth wound he’d suffered in war. Had my bullet entered half an inch to the right, it would have been the last.

With some effort, Dupuy lowered himself into a chair. He opened a rolled-up document he was holding. “Just so you know, I plan to spend my convalescence studying these plans.”

For one engineer to appropriate another’s plans was beyond bad manners. “Those plans are of my trench!” protested Verboom.

“Yours?” said Dupuy. “Are you quite sure? If so, you’re going to have to take responsibility for it.” In spite of his wound, he spoke with a Bazoches voice, clear and precise. “Water has been found in the trenches; half the days have been spent digging at the earth, half bailing water. Then there is the fact that we have been losing between twenty and thirty dead and wounded a day to artillery fire, an unsustainable figure, and all of them highly trained — that is to say, irreplaceable — sappers. And the reason why? Because, sir, the parallels are excessively wide, and they are insufficiently deep, giving the enemy all the more to aim at. The losses are intolerable.”

Verboom’s attempts at protest fell on deaf ears.

“I could go on,” said Dupuy, “endlessly, in fact, as to the malign subversions contained in these plans. To top it off, the very height of ridiculousness, the cuts between the third parallel and the ‘gentlemen’ beneath Saint Clara are so long, it’s as though they’ve been designed expressly to invite a sortie against their flanks. You, sir, have created a trench that is akin to the Lord God creating man with the neck of a giraffe, so long and thin that the tiniest nick will mean decapitation.” He threw the documents across the floor. “Sir! If you are the author of this trench, it can mean one of only two things: One, you are a negligent hotspur undeserving of the title of engineer, a man who, by some strange twist of fate, is in over his head. Or, even more criminal, if you are the author of this trench, then you are an enemy of the Two Crowns and in service of the archduke. You choose.”

Verboom gave Jimmy a pleading look. In such cases, Jimmy’s answer was to open his ruthless eyes very wide, not move his body, and let an ominous little smile spread across his lips. A smile, as I can say from experience, that would have made Genghis Khan turn pale. Instead of speaking, he said nothing, giving the floor to his victim to deliver an impossible justification.

“Perhaps. .” stuttered Verboom, livid, cornered, “. . perhaps some imposter has meddled with the design!”

“Ho!” said Jimmy, applauding. “Now I’ve heard it all. The kidnapper was kidnapped!” Jimmy could spit words like icicles when he chose to: “Out of my sight now, dullard.”

In private, Jimmy and Dupuy were quite informal with each other. All hierarchy was forgotten.

“He’ll be hanged, then?” asked Dupuy.

“No,” said Jimmy, casting his gaze out over the embers of the battle. “Philip has already poured twenty million into this siege. Having his chief engineer killed would be too much. But — and you have my word on this — that man will never cross the Pyrenees again. He’ll have to make do serving the maniac they’ve put on the throne in Madrid. Torment enough.”

Words that condemned Verboom. Jimmy himself didn’t know the extremes of cruelty his sentence would lead to. Thus, the Antwerp butcher, who had always sought to be beloved of his superiors and adored by the soldiery, spent the rest of his days miserably seeking the protection of a mad king against the rank and file, who thought of engineers as bricklayers and meddlers. This was his reward. Well, also, I later went after him and killed him — oh, I’ve already said?

Dupuy looked over Verboom’s (my) plans, smiling and shaking his head.

“What are you smiling at?” said Jimmy scaldingly. “We’ve had a hiding, and you look as though you couldn’t be happier.”

Still looking at the paper, Dupuy said: “He was educated by my cousin. What did you expect?”

Jimmy exploded. “I expected that you would alter all the stunts hidden in that trench!”

“And I would have,” said Dupuy, “if you’d given me time. In that, Verboom was right: A little self-restraint wouldn’t have gone amiss in you. But Martí knew that was the one thing you’d lack, that you’d want a swift victory. Again Vauban trumps Coehoorn. And now we have only two options: Either we suspend the trench works, accepting that defeat as well, or we push on and correct the errors that have been made. And you know very well the lives that will cost.” Again he tossed down the plans. “This is no trench, it’s a labyrinth.”

“No,” said Jimmy, giving voice to his thoughts. “It’s a knot.”

13

Jimmy elected to take an ax to it, like the Gordian knot it was. This was Jimmy to a T. He’d been overhasty in unleashing the assault, spurred on both by his Coehoornian spirit and by political expedience. But he was prepared to rectify the situation. Vauban? Coehoorn? In this instance, he was going to follow neither.

He lined up over a hundred cannons to crush any and every stone that lay in his way. His idea, doing away with any semblance of the art of siege warfare, consisted of flattening what was left of Barcelona’s ramparts and bastions, paving the way for the Army of the Two Crowns to march in in battle formation, as in a battle in open country. It would take longer than the initial forecast, but did Jimmy mind that? He had all the time in the world. Saint Clara prompted him to renounce his designs on the throne of England. His place was in London, vying to be king, and yet here he was, his future in ruins because of a city that refused to play along.

There was nothing to be done in the face of such an onslaught; the principles of engineering became meaningless. It was the first time I saw Costa, our stoical parsley-chewing chief of artillery, lose hope. We ran into each other one day, and hunkering down as the walls detonated around us, he grabbed hold of my sleeve, imploring and accusatory, and bellowed in my ear: “I swore I’d hold them off as long as we were three against five. Now they’ve got nine cannons to every one of ours! For the love of God, what more do you want from us?”

I extricated myself without giving an answer. The Mallorcans carried on working miracles to the end. They’d fire their mortars and, before the enemy had time to pinpoint where the shots were coming from, change position before taking aim once more. They destroyed several Bourbon cannons daily. The shells would go off on the French and Spanish gunners’ toes, making a hash of their bodies and lifting the cannons themselves to Babelian heights.

How grand, how majestic a sight: that of heavy artillery tossed in the air! We saw ten-foot iron or bronze barrels twirl through the sky, along with their crews. We saw parabolas of gun carriages lovelier than Jacob’s wheel. Up on his balcony, watching with his telescope, being the aesthete he was, Jimmy couldn’t have cared less whether they came to land on the broken-down farmhouses of Catalonia, or if they ended up lodged in the sun over France.

And yet, and yet, in the end the skill of the Mallorcans would all be for naught. The Bourbons had inexhaustible resources, of machinery as much as of men. Whereas every one of the Mallorcan gunners we lost was irreplaceable. They were peculiar folk, the Mallorcans, and never said a single word about their dead.

Jimmy resorting to that firestorm took the situation one step closer to the absurd. The siege was no longer a duel between thinking minds but, rather, a steady stream of devastation. I received the order from Don Antonio to withdraw from the front line, and he was quite right: The enemy’s new strategy rendered any technical course of action useless. We had gone beyond the civilized and rational. “Perfection can be reached only by going beyond the merely human dimension,” Don Antonio had said. Certainly Jimmy’s approach, all powerful and at the same time atavistic, destructive, and simply berserk, was dragging the situation beyond all limits. And here is a thing worthy of note: On the first day I was away from the point of attack, I felt a sickness settle on me, as though I were in need of the pain that had been racking me.

So, being of no use to those battered ramparts, I moved back inside the city. We hadn’t checked in on the enemy’s mining endeavors for a long time. I’d always had a strong dislike for mines. Vauban had no truck with them, and whether we want to or not, we take on the likes and dislikes of our teachers. The marquis saw mines as decoys and therefore ungentlemanly. According to him, the enemy must be beaten head-on; underhand tactics were not acceptable. On top of which, to a mind as supremely rational as his, a moyen si incertain was intolerable.

Mines have their fair share of proponents. Should the besieging army succeed in drilling a tunnel underneath the enemy walls and packing it with explosives, the battlements will fall — by surprise, and avoiding all risks. The hardships usually associated with a siege, over in an instant. And in a thundering, apocalyptic manner — not subject to appeal. I’ve known Maganons who dreamed of packing fifty thousand pounds of explosives into a mine. Proof that even the most exact science can go overboard; were they looking to blow the walls or the entire city, or what?

You can understand the fervor of those who argue for mines. A mine is employed with the certainty of saving time and lives. In practice, and according to what I’ve seen, this is never the case. Drilling a subterranean tunnel consumes all manner of resources, and without fail, some of those must be taken from the Attack Trench works; in an effort to save time, you only cause delays. Then there is the fact that the besieged will take their own measures. As Vauban put it: on the road to glory, there are no shortcuts.

There was one other reason why Longlegs Zuvi loathed mines. That reason being, of all the ways humans have devised to end one another’s lives, there are none more sinister or terrifying than underground combat.

You’d smell miners before you saw them. They spent such long periods underground that their skin gave off a warm stench; you didn’t need your senses honed in Bazoches to detect them. They were known as Los Cucs—The Worms. What was their brigade leader called? Buggered if I can recall.

Los Cucs hadn’t had much success. We knew the enemy was working on a large mine and that it was aiming between Saint Clara and Portal Nou. Knowing Jimmy, if they did reach their destination, the explosion would make that of the night of August 15 seem like a tiny spark off a flint. I asked to be brought up to speed by the captain of Los Cucs. What was his name? Strange, the things we forget. His men looked haggard and hollow-eyed, and to be presented with reinforcements was a great lift to them.

The objective of countermines is to identify the position of the enemy mine and disable it. Underground labyrinth warfare, this, with far more recourse to fire, smoke, and daggers than rifles and bullets. Los Cucs had initiated several tunnels but not yet managed to hit the Bourbon’s primary gallery.

“Don’t you worry about digging any more galleries,” the captain said to me. “Going and sounding out the walls will be more than sufficient. If you find something, you come and let us know. We’ll see to the rest.”

Men with experience have always commanded my respect — far more than the bookish kind. I nodded and went and spoke with Ballester and his men.

“You come behind me,” I said. “Every man is to bring one grenade, a dagger, and two loaded pistols, that’s all.”

The entrance to our mine was located inside a house that had been blown up, just inside the city walls, the idea being to avoid the prying eyes of any Bourbon spies. The captain of Los Cucs—I simply cannot recall that man’s name — had readied some equipment for us. Very valuable material, and we would need to take care of it. Ignorant Ballester laughed when he saw it. “You’re going down there with eight canes and. . what are those? Plates? Four plates with holes in the middle?”

“These aren’t canes and plates,” I said, not looking at him. “These are sounding lines, and these are plugs. And extremely valuable they are too.”

Down in the narrow confines of the mine, silence was essential. Before descending, I gathered Ballester’s men and tried to teach them the rudiments of the sign language of engineers. I could not. I was so afraid that my fingers trembled, and I had to give up on the idea. Very embarrassing. The men, in a circle, regarded me, expecting some kind of instruction that would enable them to face whatever inferno we were about to go down into. I was their most direct line of authority; I was supposed to be showing them the way to return to the world of the living. I looked at that vertical black shaft, and my mind was filled with all the things we might encounter down there: a trench, but mazelike, and beneath the earth, with all kinds of nooks and crannies. And Bourbons who would show no mercy, infinitely more numerous and experienced in underground combat than we were. And even perhaps fifty thousand pounds of gunpowder, ready to go up the very moment we reached the chamber. The thought of it made me shudder violently.

After that time, never have I set foot in a mine or a countermine again. Once, in the Barcelona of 1714, was enough. And that time, in front of those manly Miquelets, I wept like a child. But would you like to guess what happened?

The Miquelets were incredibly good about it. And it wasn’t mere tolerance for my bleak view of things — sincerity was far more important to them than any authority. They thought I was afraid because I didn’t trust them, and they responded like remorseful children.

“Captain Ballester and I will go first,” I said, feigning enthusiasm. “Then the rest of you. Got it?”

Down we went. A ladder, which, to save wood, had been made with fewer rungs than it needed, led us down into the gallery.

All the manuals say that the primary tunnel ought to be wide enough for two miners to move along side by side: one carrying the tools, the other a lamp and a pistol, lighting the way and protecting the other if need be. Manuals! A lot of help they are! The tunnel was so narrow, it pressed against your shoulders. Ballester had to walk behind, with me carrying the tools and the lamp. We shuffled along forty or fifty feet. Feeling stifled, struggling to breathe as if on the gallows once more, I halted.

We were only ten or fifteen feet under the ground, but it was hot as an oven. We could feel the artillery exchanges going on as they reverberated the ground. A fine shower of loose earth was falling from the poorly braced ceiling. I felt sure it was going to cave in.

Zuvi, good old Zuvi, wasn’t born to crawl along on his belly. The air became more and more stifling, and I felt invisible pincers gripping my throat. Under the ground, my Bazoches senses were worthless or as good as; the darkness was a leveler, reducing all men to moles. Those guttering lamps in our hands seemed less to light the way than make apparent just how dark it was. And given that my sight could usually take in as much as that of four men at once, to lose it was all the more crippling.

Somehow managing to turn and look behind me, I saw that lunatic Ballester in fits of laughter, though he was keeping his voice down. He pointed around us; it had finally dawned on him why, in the early stages of the siege, I’d insisted on the looting of furniture from houses across the city. The braces for this long, winding tunnel were made from the beams and planks we ourselves had removed. Window frames made the perfect tunnel supports, girding the roof and the sides. Table legs buttressed the walls.

I pushed on, bringing us through into a corridor that seemed to go on forever. Then we came to a fork. I chose the right branch.

I halted somewhere along the way and set one of the plugs against the tunnel wall. Putting my ear against the ceramic part of the large plate and hunching myself over it, I gestured for Ballester to be quiet. His men piled up behind him, their curiosity overcoming any battle seasoning.

It’s hard to believe the number of sounds that can travel through earth. They were redoubled by the ceramic, which acted like a microscope for acoustics. I introduced the first of the canes through the hole in the center of the plate. The earth was soft, and the cane, or sounding line, passed easily into it, traveling farther and farther into the wall. Once it was all the way in, I screwed the next one onto its bottom and resumed pushing. Then another sounding line, then another. Finally, I could tell, combining my senses of hearing and touch, that the lines in series had come out into a space; the resistance of compacted earth wasn’t there anymore. Then I had to feed a thinnish piece of cable down the center of the line, thereby clearing the earth out of it. And when that was done, withdrawing the cable, I could look along the interior of the line, which functioned like a periscope.

The only thing I could tell was that it was an enemy gallery — flickering lights, movements, shadows. I could hear as much as see them. But they were there, all right.

Dark bodies came across my field of vision. I could hear their picks, and the sound of baskets full of earth being dragged along. Their presence became more and more sharply defined, details such as someone clearing his throat.

“What on earth are you doing?” whispered Ballester.

The movements I was making must have struck him as strange. I’d put my eye up to the end of the line for the briefest moment, then pull my head back, and again go to the line — back and forth, like a chicken pecking for seeds. I gestured for him to be quiet.

Too late. Perhaps they heard Ballester, or perhaps they saw my line poking through into their gallery; whatever it was, within moments they had sent a line of their own in our direction, and it emerged into our gallery between Ballester and me. A tubular worm poking through into the space, a metal circle no wider than a thumb and forefinger. And yet what a terrifying thing, for it meant that we’d been discovered.

That little tube of metal — apparently inoffensive — signified death. The men at the far end were killers, and they had sniffed us out. French sappers, veterans of a thousand skirmishes, possibly trained by Vauban himself. And what adeptness they showed: The moment they’d heard or perhaps only sensed us, one sank a sounding line into the wall and located us at the first attempt. I was paralyzed with fear.

Ballester understood what was happening and responded in typical fashion: He inserted his pistol into the opening at the end of the enemy line and pulled the trigger. We heard cries. Ballester’s bullet had doubtless hit the enemy sapper in the eye. Perhaps now my chicken-head movements will make sense. Indignation among the dead man’s colleagues, shouts, insults. I decided to skip the niceties: “Back, back!” I cried. “Get out, before they smoke us out!”

I by no means ordered the retreat for the sake of it. On top of my habitual cowardice, there was what I’d been taught at Bazoches.

When a brigade of miners locates the opponent’s gallery, it will proceed to drill a small trou, that is, a hole. Into this hole, a bolus of pine needles will be introduced — the size of a cannonball, smeared with pitch and on fire — and stuffed all the way through. Innocuous it might seem, but far from it. In such narrow spaces, smoke becomes a lethal weapon. In under a minute, all breathable air will have been consumed; the men will pass out and die from suffocation. And if the lack of air doesn’t kill them, the enemy will, breaking into the gallery as soon as the smoke has cleared and knifing the fallen bodies.

The French miners had far more expertise than the Miquelets in such matters; they’d be sure to drill a smoke hole far more quickly than we would. And as it says in the manual of good old Zuvi, if you cannot win a race, best to run in the opposite direction. And be quick about it!

We shuffled out of there like centipedes, reaching the ladder just in time. As soon as we were back above earth, the mine shaft began to vomit black smoke, like an underground chimney.

All I said to Ballester was: “How did you know it’s standard procedure to shoot your pistol along an enemy sounding line like that?”

“I didn’t.”

Feeling ever bleaker, I went and sat in the corner of the abandoned house, head in hands. The Miquelets, not understanding my despondency, tried to console me. I let out a bitter laugh. “You’ll soon get it,” I said.

Los Cucs soon showed up, and their captain asked me how it had gone.

“What?” he cried. “You’ve given away the whereabouts of one of our galleries? And they smoked you out?” He looked despairing. “Do you know what it took for us to make that tunnel? All that work, ruined in half an hour! How am I supposed to lead my men down into a gallery that the enemy has detected? We’ll have to block it up and start a whole new one! What kind of imbeciles has the government sent me?”

The final days down in the mine comprised unutterable horrors. Worst of all were the reproachful glances I got from the leader of Los Cucs (his name is still a blank!) when we went back down the shaft.

Above, ramparts that might succumb at any moment; below, a hidden deposit of gunpowder, tons of it, that might blow before we found it. One day when we were about to go underground again, I told Ballester’s men to wait: There were voices rising up out of the mine, distorted by how far underground they were, but clearly not belonging to Los Cucs. The Miquelets pointed their guns down into the shaft.

Everyone was silent. I placed my ear to the entrance of the shaft. Whispers in French and Catalan. The Bourbons had plenty of botifleros in their service, so it would make sense to use some of them in the mines.

The Miquelets’ fingers were on their triggers, guns encircling the shaft entrance. Then a head appeared, and it had fair and very knotty hair. He looked up at me and said in a happy voice: “Hello, jefe! What are you doing here?”

Behind Anfán came Nan, and behind them several Cucs. I was speechless. Their leader explained. “The boy and the dwarf save us all kinds of work. They’re so small and agile, we can send them into the tiniest shafts and have them listen for enemies. You know them? Why are you looking at me like that?”

This sparked the final fight between Amelis and me. Dashing to the beach with long Zuvi strides, I found her in line at the camp mess.

The only free food provided by the government was a bland fish soup. The line was strictly regimented — the Red Pelts had posted a guard to see that no one got too much — a couple of ladlefuls was the maximum. Amelis ignored me totally. She was so exhausted that her eyes were violet-red, and all her attention was focused on the back of the person in front of her. I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the line. Then she came to life, thrashing around desperately, trying to get clear of me. Her scrawny body felt light as a feather.

Amelis’s place in the line was taken immediately by the unscrupulous woman behind her. When Amelis saw she’d lost her place, her legs gave way. She fell to her knees on the sand and wept, her skirts spread out around her like the petals of an open flower.

“Anfán!” I cried. “How could you have let him enlist?”

“Déu meu, Déu meu,” she sobbed.

“He’s joined up!” I went on. “He’ll be killed down in those mines!”

She looked up at me, her face wet with tears. “Want to know how long I’ve been in line? Since midday yesterday!”

“We took him away from war, from being a trench rat!” I replied. “And all for him to end up dead from an explosion or from a bullet in the head. The French sappers aren’t playing games down there!”

She threw her metal bowl in my face. “I was here all yesterday, all last night, and all this morning. And you come and yank me out of the line! What are we supposed to eat? Tell me that!”

It was pointless trying to reason with her — it was the hunger speaking, not Amelis. She barely had the energy to argue. She hung her head like a small dying animal.

Half of the soup rations was apportioned to the wounded and sick in the hospital. It was becoming more watered down daily, and they were using fresh water from the last irrigation canal still coming into the city. The Bourbons had dammed all but one, and that they’d been polluting by placing dead bodies upstream. But the poor gulped it down like nectar — anything to avoid the husk torta.

While we’d been arguing, the crowds of people had ebbed away. The woman who had taken Amelis’s place in line was the last to be given soup. The people behind her were all protesting. There was uproar, but only in a minor way: The people were so depleted that a couple of blows from the guards dispersed them. Amelis’s sobbing gave way to a torrent of tears.

I’d have to take it up with Anfán himself. I ought to point out how much time had passed since I’d encountered him at Tortosa: That was in 1708, and it was now 1714. I roughly estimated that he’d been born at the turn of the century, and that the eight-year-old was now fourteen. He wasn’t a child any longer.

When Anfán appeared out of the mineshaft, I begged the leader of the Cucs to discharge him. I could hardly blame him for his response, which was one of surprise: “We’re so short on troops, why would we turn away anyone of military age?”

Fourteen was the age when a Catalan could legally bear arms. After the years he’d spent under our roof, when we’d taken good care of him and taught him manners, Anfán had turned into quite an impressive young man. I kick myself for not having noticed sooner. If you stare at the grass day after day, you’ll miss the fact it’s growing. After all, parents always see their children as the babies they once were.

A frontal assault would have been pointless, so I came at him another way, with conversation and affection. We had a long discussion about the mining operation. Anfán filled me in at length: Los Cucs had been saving time by creating diminutive tunnels on either side of the main mines and sending Nan and Anfán down them. Whenever they found one of the Bourbon galleries, they’d drill through to it, starting overhead and angling the fist-width cavity downward, and then roll two or three grenades in with the fuses lit, before crawling quickly back the way they’d come.

The story made me smile but also shudder. In mine warfare, the combatants, though faceless, soon got to know their opponents by the techniques they used. I felt sure that the Bourbons would have put a price on the heads of these two rats by now.

“So you don’t care about Nan, is that right?” I asked, smiling coldly. “At this very moment, there must be dozens of enemy miners thinking of ways to kill the both of you.”

Anfán threw his arms wide, ready to take me on. “Dozens? I thought it would be thousands. Casanova’s son is fourteen, and he was made drummer of a regiment.”

I couldn’t contain myself: “And Casanova went and saw him off in person! He pulled some strings so they’d be sent away from the city! They’re now garrisoning a place called Cardona!”

And I wasn’t lying, either. The Red Pelts loved demonstrating their Homeric virtues: Sending troops out into other parts of Catalonia was like saying to Jimmy that the people of Barcelona had more than enough courage, constancy, and resolve to overcome anything he cared to throw at them. (You can imagine what Don Antonio thought about our own leaders giving men leave.) The fact was, at Cardona, one of the few places the Generalitat still controlled, no fighting was taking place. The Bourbons knew as well as we did that if Barcelona fell, the rest of Catalonia would subside with it, and therefore they dedicated no resources to the outgrowths of “rebellion” elsewhere.

I grabbed Anfán by the arms. “Am I the jefe? Say it. Am I or not?”

Truly, he had grown older. He answered me gravely. “Yes, jefe, you absolutely are. All right, I won’t go back down the mine.” He made the sign of the cross. “I swear.”

I didn’t believe a word of it.

The next day, a small troop of Cucs, just four men, finally identified the whereabouts of the primary enemy mine, or Royal Mine, a gallery containing a hundred barrels of gunpowder covered in soaked hide. Los Cucs managed to slit the guards’ throats and, having set a charge to collapse the ceiling, ghosted the barrels away. Mine found, mine destroyed.

This was the last thing to cheer about. Church bells throughout the city chimed the victory. The Cucs heroes’ names were Francisco Diago, one of our Aragonese; Josep Mateu, a native of Barcelona; and the man who had led them, the leader of the Cucs—what was his name? What a shame not to be able to remember such a sublime warrior!. . And the fourth of the crew, naturally, was Anfán. Having crawled along one of the small antechambers, he had been the one to hit upon the Royal Mine. How would you have reacted? Would you have told him off or applauded? I chose to do neither.

For the thousandth time, dear vile Waltraud makes me stop. Am I not allowed even a brief moment to enjoy the memory of that rare victory?

What’s that you say? How strange that I remember the names of the lower-ranking Cucs but not that of the leader? That it’s suspicious for a memory as prodigious as mine not to have retained that hero’s name, the man who won the city a stay of execution? That maybe I’m pretending and not saying his name because I didn’t like the man?

All right, all right!

You are quite right. I set myself to be sincere, fully, and I will be.

The Cucs hero was Francesc Molina, and he was the son of a couple who had married in Barcelona but moved back to their native country. They identified so strongly with the city that their son, as did so many other foreigners, had come to fight there, even engaging in mine warfare for the sake of the Catalan capital. He’d fought tooth and nail, day after day, night after night, and finally managed to locate that lethal mound of explosives.

What’s that? Where were the Molinas from?

I see, I see, you want me humiliated fully and utterly.

I give in.

The Molinas were from Naples.

14

I, Martí Zuviría, engineer (let’s save ourselves the long-winded titles) consent to the following things:

That national extractions are quite random and have no bearing on the character of peoples.

That the vast majority of the Italians I have met are good God-loving creatures, upstanding, trustworthy, decent, and that no one has the right to blame defects or personal slights on whole communities.

And, so that it is set down in writing, I hereby retract any insidious claims there might be in this book with regard to Neapolitans, Italians, and foreigners in general, French, Germans, Castilians, Moors, Jews, Maoris, Oglaga, Dutch, Chinese, Persian.

The other option, correcting the sullied pages, would be a recourse that my parlous finances would not allow.

Happy now? Make you feel good, imposing your will on this shredded bag of bones, as good as on his deathbed? Lo and behold, we end like this: I, the author, begging the forgiveness of the one scribbling down my words.

Yes, all right, you’re right: Let’s move on. Finish the tale. There’s one last tear to cry.

On September 3, 1714, all our seas parted. And the thing that provoked it was neither cannibal hunger, nor an enemy victory, nor an exhausted population giving in. The cause, paradoxically, was a magnanimous gesture by Jimmy.

A messenger came from the enemy encampment that day. Jimmy warned us to surrender or suffer an attack with unimaginable consequences. The text itself was brief and intimidating, with no room for mercy: Give in, or we’d all have our throats cut, right down to the unborn children. But there’s one thing I ought to be clear about, to do with the rules that govern a siege.

The ultimate aim of an Attack Trench is to force the besieged city to sue for peace, or, as the French say, battre la chamade. In such circumstances, with the trench reaching as far as the city moat, and the ramparts on the verge of collapse, terms are sought to try and safeguard the remaining vestiges. Life, honor, and if possible, a little property. Otherwise the attacking army has every right to enter the city and pillage and rape as much as it pleases. A chamade avoids this extreme. War etiquette — which, in my day, was adhered to by all, barring Pópuli, that animal, and his pro-Philip generals — requires that any besieged position that sues for peace will at least keep intact the lives of its remaining population and the honor of its garrison.

It was an unusual thing for Jimmy to do, because it was never the besieging army but the besieged who would carry out a battre la chamade. The straits we were in justified Jimmy’s decision. But by being the one to send the messenger, and not the other way around, he was opening the door to negotiations. And at that, a negotiation that promised more than the bare minimum. Bravery and constancy always bring some reward: The battle in August had made Jimmy fear that his troops might be massacred. Victory might cost him half the army, and neither Little Philip nor the Beast would be overly pleased at losing their most distinguished officers. Further, if it did come to that, the Bourbon rank and file would be enraged and uncontainable in their desire to take revenge by sacking the city. They would lay waste to Barcelona. And Jimmy didn’t like the idea of the same philosophers he’d been raised among calling him a savage.

The message was written in arrogant and threatening terms, but Don Antonio saw its real meaning. The enemy would discuss terms! Exultant, he called the high command together, looking for them to take a unanimous proposal to the government. As his aide-de-camp, I was also present.

Don Antonio began by pointing out what a unique opportunity it was. It would be beyond insane to let it pass by. We were in a position to save the city, its inhabitants, and even possibly one or two other things besides. Negotiating wasn’t a job for the military but for politicians, so our task was to make sure the government understood they couldn’t ignore this chance. It would be the last, and it might avert a catastrophe of biblical proportions.

I remember Don Antonio smiling — a rare sight! All our hardships had not been for nothing, all our struggles had borne fruit: The enemy was willing to enter discussions. If our diplomats were worth their salt, the core of the Catalan constitutions and liberties might, might, be upheld.

But the meeting with the high command did not go well. I remember the large rectangular table, packed tightly around with officers. Their uniforms clean but in tatters, and everyone gaunt. Not one of them went along with their commander in chief’s suggestion. Not one could look him in the eye. It wasn’t that they doubted his authority, he was still revered, but they simply weren’t in agreement with the idea of surrendering.

Don Antonio refused to give up yet, and he turned to Casanova to urge a vote in the council. Casanova went along with it, but coolly; he knew better than anyone the leanings of Barcelona’s so very isocratic government.

The vote was a landslide — in the wrong direction. Of thirty representatives, only three were in favor of Casanova’s motion to negotiate with the Bourbons: It was twenty-six against four. For only three to vote with the head of the government said everything about Casanova’s isolated position. In such circumstances, how could policies ever be enforced?

Everything was topsy-turvy now: The only people willing to end the war were the generals.

The news came to us the following day: Don Antonio had stood down. In the face of the inevitable disaster to come, he sent word to the government: Honor prevented him from taking charge of a rout. Therefore, with all military means exhausted, he requested to be put aboard a ship. He’d waive all moneys owed along with all privileges.

I view this as one last attempt to win them over: Either they negotiate or lose him. Unfortunately, the situation had gone beyond all reasonable bounds. The government merely assented: If he wanted to stand down, they would provide him with a couple of swift ships, and he could try and slip through the blockade. Our small, easily maneuverable ships were always used whenever evacuating anyone important, the French ships’ hulls being too deep for them to venture into the shallows. The small Catalan vessels would depart under cover of dark, hugging the coast, and sail through the night in the direction of Mallorca.

I was so stunned by the news, I almost thought it was a prank. Don Antonio was leaving us! Dumbfounded, I didn’t ask who was replacing him. I could imagine no one capable of taking the role, and indeed, no one was whom they appointed. That is: The Virgin Mary was proclaimed commander in chief.

The Virgin Mary! It had to be a joke. But no, anything but. Martí Zuviría, educated in all the possible nuances of compass and telescope, in precisely displacing exact amounts of earth, would from now on be taking orders from the mother of Jesus.

In the small hours of the next morning, while I was taking an uncomfortable nap against a battlement wall, a liaison officer came and woke me. “Don Antonio is boarding a boat and wishes to see you.”

There were chests and trunks piled up in his courtyard, ready to be taken down to the port. Officers hurried in and out of the premises; even at this late stage, Don Antonio was keeping abreast of the situation on the ramparts. I found it strange seeing him dressed in full regalia now that he was no longer general. It is, and always will be, my belief that he clung to the hope that the government would change its mind and reinstate him. To the last instant. Seeing me, he said: “Have you not heard? Then I’ll tell you: I’m no longer commanding the forces of Barcelona. Someone else will be giving the orders.”

“Who? The Virgin?”

He was moved. Unusually for him, he made the effort to pronounce “son” properly in Catalan. “Be content, fiyé. Now that I am a private citizen, you can call me Don Antonio, as you’ve always wanted.”

“Thank you, General,” I said, grinding my teeth on the irony in my words. “You can’t imagine how happy that makes me.”

Unfazed, he adjusted his sword in his belt. “Didn’t you hear? I’m not your commander anymore, I’m Don Antonio to you now. All these years I’ve been slapping your wrist when you have had the impertinence to call me that, and now you can. From now on I am, to you and to anybody else, just another citizen. Don Antonio, if that’s what you wish. Understand?”

“Loud and clear, General.” And I added: “From today, I’m allowed to address you as a simple fellow citizen, General.”

For a brief second, emotion seemed to creep into his mien. The ongoing cannon fire added melancholic urgency to his reflections. For I had spoken on behalf of all who loved him. During the time he had commanded armed civilians, they had considered him one of their own, another Barcelonan. And now that he was leaving, the least obedient of these Barcelonans had shown him his true standing, not so much in a military as a moral sense.

Of course, a man like Don Antonio wouldn’t allow himself to be overcome by emotion. He began pacing up and down. As he spoke, he became increasingly incensed. “I’ve done everything I can, I’ve argued and begged, I’ve warned the government of all the ills to come! Defending this city is pure madness now! Staying would mean signing my men’s death warrants. Leaving, I abandon them. What have I done to deserve such ignominy?”

I tried to calm him down. It was then that he revealed the real reason he’d sent for me.

“I saved you from bondage once before, at Illueca. I see no reason why I shouldn’t do so once more. We’ll wake tomorrow in Mallorca, and after that go on to Italy, and from there to court. In Vienna, all your unpaid wages will be seen to: Remember that yours was a royal conscription, not a municipal one. Which means your allegiance is not to Barcelona, and to board a ship would not constitute desertion. And, when I am given a post in the imperial army, I will want an engineer on my staff.”

Before I could speak, he went on: “You have a wife and children, as I do. There are a number of spare berths on the ships. Go and gather up your family, and do it now.” He bade me hurry with a wave of the hand.

I stayed where I was. Knowing what that meant, he demanded I explain myself. I remember the way my voice didn’t seem to belong to me: “General, I cannot,” I said.

He looked me up and down, and finally, our eyes met.

“I don’t understand. Your temperament is entirely opposed to that of the brave men out there still fighting. The city is being sacrificed, and to what end? Answer me that!”

I did not know what to say.

“So starved you’ve eaten your own tongue?” he went on, raising his voice. “What makes you want to be a part of the carnage now? You’ve always been against it. What? You’ve always been the first to support any retreat! Why stay? Tell me your reasoning!”

In spite of myself, I said nothing. Don Antonio insisted. “Say something, even if just a word. One word, Lord above, at least give me a word!”

One word. Seven years on, and Vauban, in the shape of Don Antonio, was asking me that question again. I blinked, cleared my throat. I racked my brains, but nothing.

I’d unwittingly inflicted more pain on an already suffering soul, an immaculate hero whose very honor was forcing him to depart. Even Martí Zuviría, prince among cowards, had decided to stand and fight. A contrast that undoubtedly would have pained him.

Bewildered, I put my tricorn on my head and, without asking his permission, made to leave. He stopped me: “Wait. You were with me at the Toledo retreat and at Brihuega as well. And you’ve been with me throughout this siege. It’s only right you share in my punishment.”

And it was quite some punishment: Before he left, he wanted to bid the troops farewell. Don Antonio de Villarroel, the perfect warrior, had to tell his men that he was abandoning them to the inferno while he sailed away to a palace somewhere. Hard as it would be, nothing in the world would prevent him from bidding that farewell, even if they were going to insult, condemn, and revile him.

We left his residence, and someone brought us horses. We both mounted up, and settling on his saddle, Don Antonio said: “Let’s go to it.”

Spoken like a martyr. I’m certain that what he wanted was a famous death, the chance to die taking part in some heroic action. Instead, fate had presented him with a pitiful exit through the back door. We rode side by side. As we approached the ramparts, and in breach of all protocol, I grabbed him by the forearm and said: “General, this isn’t necessary.”

Offended, he threw my hand clear. “Let me go! I have never in all my days fled an enemy. Am I to do so now, from my own men?”

He spurred his horse on, and I followed. I was consumed by worry — not for myself but for Don Antonio. Very few knew the straits he was in, leaving not out of fear but because there was no way for him not to.

We came to the foot of the ramparts. By some miracle, there was a pause in the fighting. Up on Saint Clara, Portal Nou, and the intervening wall, heads turned. At the sight of Don Antonio, they began to gather at the rear of the remaining fortifications. Once they were all there, crammed together and listening, Don Antonio tried to speak, but words failed him. Something in him broke.

His horse began rearing, and Don Antonio barely managed to steady it. Pinching the bridge of his nose as if to stifle the emotions, he again tried to speak. Again the words wouldn’t come.

At certain rare moments, time stands still. Up on the bastions and ramparts stood those hundreds of skeletal men, thinner than the rifles they were carrying. Gaunt faces and tricorns tattered and rent by bullets and grapeshot. Uniforms dull with soot and ash, sleeves only barely attached to the rest of their jackets. And the smell. Like long-dead carrion. Right down to the last drummer, they’d heard the news: Their commander was departing. What did he have to say? Hundreds of them, they all kept their eyes fixed on Don Antonio.

And after weeks and weeks in which the sun had beaten down mercilessly and not a cloud had been seen, fat drops of rain began to fall. A great crowd had gathered, and yet you could hear the raindrops land. The stones of the city, warmed by a year of artillery fire, smoldered in the downpour. Nobody blinked.

For the third time, Don Antonio tried to find the words. There was a moment when it seemed like the skin on his face would fall from it. Still mute, he exposed his head, lifting off his tricorn with his right hand, saluting the gathered men. His horse skittered nervously, its rider keeping his hat high in the air as the rain continued to fall. He said nothing; there was nothing more. The only thing left for Don Antonio was to depart. For the men of the Coronela, it was back to manning the walls.

Spurring his horse forward, Don Antonio rode along the interior of the ramparts. His hand still in the air, bearing his tricorn aloft, bidding farewell to the citizen army he’d led for so long. I decided to catch up with him. I rode on his right side, between him and the ramparts. Ridiculous, but I thought by putting my body between him and them, even if there were some soldier in deep despair, it might stop them from shooting the departing general from his saddle. What a difference between this and that long-ago battle of Brihuega in 1710, when Zuvi the rat rode with Don Antonio between him and enemy bullets.

I hadn’t quite caught him when a roar went up. I lifted my head.

The men of the Coronela, Castilians, Aragonese, Valencians, and Germans, all waving their rifles above their heads. And they weren’t cursing Don Antonio but cheering for him. A piecemeal clamor, formless, consisting of just his first name, repeated—Don Antonio! Don Antonio! Don Antonio! — that grew louder and louder. The rain intensified, and with it, the commotion. Don Antonio was overcome and spurred his horse on to escape the ovation. Catching up with him, I saw something I thought I’d never see in all my days: The man was crying.

Don Antonio crying! I thought oak trees would dance before it came to that! Noticing that I’d seen his tears, he tried to justify himself: “My one desire is to stay with them, but honor prevents me. I cannot act as commander to a defense that has moved out of the realms of bravery and become sheer recklessness. Nor could I ever forgive myself for putting so many innocent lives at risk.”

We left the ramparts behind. The rain continued to fall. Calming his horse with unhappy caresses, Don Antonio whispered to himself, seemingly unaware of me: “I hope those ships never come,” he said. “That way I might die shoulder to shoulder with these men, like any other soldier.”

Don Antonio bade his men farewell on the eighth, and between then and the eleventh, that dismal September eleventh, the rain fell nonstop, all day and all night.

What a contrast from the inferno that August had been. To begin with, it was a balm, refreshing and relieving us, bringing life where before there had been only the stifling heat. All exposed gunpowder dampened, the Bourbon shelling was briefly suspended. But the downpour also transformed our environment into one of mud and darkness, making the place all the more inhospitable.

The breaches in the walls were a sight to behold. There were five of them, each between a hundred and two hundred feet wide. As many as 687 men would be able to pass through them shoulder to shoulder (don’t be surprised at the exactitude of the 687, a Bazoches calculation); that is, roughly two regiments in battle formation.

And there was no way of plugging such gaps. We threw hundreds of spiked wooden bats down into them, spiked with six-inch nails. The workers threw them as far as they could, to try not to expose themselves to enemy fire, even if that meant the placing was not very exact. Thus we made spike-fields of the ground in the gaps.

Dripping wet, beneath dark skies, I continued giving instructions to the living dead manning the defenses. Everyone was worn out, which made it deeply unpleasant having to force them to carry on plugging the gaps. On the city side of each, we dug a ditch and stacked fajinas along it, and behind, another ditch, another fajina parapet, and another. We made a good number of these, all equally fragile. At certain chosen positions, we placed “organs,” which was the name for the invention of a certain local Archimedes.

Essentially, “organs” were wooden platforms with ten or fifteen loaded rifles lined up along them. A thin piece of string ran along all the triggers. A single yank — anyone could do it, even an ancient like Peret — and a synchronous volley would be fired into the invaded area. It was never likely to be very effective, but at that late stage, we had far more weapons remaining than we did men.

There was one final feat. With Don Antonio gone, I felt free to fight on my own account. I’d learned that, in the desperate defense of a city, everything, rocks, flesh, and even blood are brought to bear. Why not the very elements?

I took aside the workers who were in the best condition. We used the last reserves of wood to create a long canal, paving it with overlapping timbers. The rain meant well water didn’t have to be saved, and this aqueduct of ours ran from one of the largest municipal reservoirs out as far as the ramparts. We opened the sluices one night, and a torrent of water inundated the enemy’s forward positions. Water gushed over the “gentlemen,” and into the cuts, and then the trenches, taking people, fajina baskets, and armatures with it. A flood during the night is all the more fearsome. The Bourbons couldn’t have known what was going on; besides, what purpose could it possibly serve to shoot at a torrent of water?

The forward part of the trenches became a sewer. At points, the water was chest-deep. A whole day was spent by the enemy bailing out that putrid water. One day, which for us meant one more day in the world of the living. A victory, however brief. Though inside the city, we were so weary, we didn’t even have the energy to celebrate it.

While the Bourbons wallowed in the mud, I went and found Costa. I’d never seen him looking so downcast. Francesc Costa, a man who needed nothing but his sprig of parsley to be content.

“Come, Costa,” I said, trying to cheer him up. “We’ve come too far to give up. Prepare guns and munitions.”

But he was sitting down, letting the rain fall on his uncovered head, soaked through and hugging himself as though he had a fever. “Munitions. Munitions, you say?” he spat sarcastically. “I haven’t even got parsley left to chew. That trench was it for us.”

This reference to my handiwork pained me. “The cannons!” I suddenly shouted, and leaving aside all formalities, I went on: “Place them behind the breaches and forget everything else!”

When things become desperate, rumors have the power to displace hope. Dreams. People began saying that an English fleet was on the way and that Charles had sent a German legion. All lies. The anguished multitudes rushed to Plaza del Born, at the center of the city, praying for Barcelona to be saved. Inanities. Deep down, those of us manning the breaches didn’t believe in anything, we just fought.

And a good thing that Jimmy’s artillery volcano had been extinguished. As I’ve said, the damp gunpowder prevented them from shelling us for a short time. In place of projectiles, they hurled taunts and threats our way. They were positioned at the crown of the ditch, and their shouts carried across that short distance. They could not have been more than a hundred feet from what remained of the ramparts.

The boldest among them peeked their heads over the tops of the “gentlemen,” at the trench’s most forward point, and made throat-slitting gestures or waved their fists. And said to us, in grimmest tones: “Ça va être votre fête!”

On the night of September 10, I did not sleep. Could not. You didn’t need great powers of intuition to guess the final assault would begin at any moment. One of the things we’d done in anticipation was to pull back a number of the most exposed positions. It would be suicide to have groups of men so close to the Bourbon “gentlemen.” In the most devastated areas, we chose to create a retreat space for the men who would be receiving the first wave. So that night there was a kind of dead space between our lines and Jimmy’s.

I’ve seen a large number of bombarded landscapes in my time, and the exceptional thing about this one was the outline of the ruins. Even the heaviest artillery usually only pierces rooftops and smashes ramparts, leaving sharp and pointed silhouettes. But when a barrage is so intense and has been carried out over such a long time, the edges take on an undulating bluntness, as though eroded over thousands of years. A very fine drizzle continued to fall over that labyrinth of ruins. The night was black, the moon hidden behind the weeping clouds. My feet slipped among smashed gun carriages, broken rifles, half-buried fajina baskets, their wicker mouths gawping ominously from the earth like the faces of drowned people. And thousands of our spiked bats, scattered everywhere. This was a place of such silence, sadness, and ghostliness that even my science was dispelled by its powers.

And then, for no apparent reason, I was overcome by a desire to go back to our tent on the beach.

Amelis was sleeping, unclothed. I awoke her. “Where’s Anfán?”

She was subsumed in a drowsiness that was more hunger and exhaustion than sleep. She opened her eyes, those enormous black eyes. I remember being there, in the dark of night, in that meager tent on the beach. Her on the mattress, naked, covered in sweat, while I knelt down and embraced her, less out of love than an urge to protect. She was feverish. I’d woken her from a nightmare. Feeling my hand reaching around her back, she smiled, as though this were some long-awaited reunion. “Martí,” she whispered, “you’re here.”

It was a subdued and queasy feeling of joy.

“For the love of God, Amelis! Where’s Anfán?”

If Nan and Anfán were killed, all would have been for absolutely nothing. They’d been part of my household for seven years now, seven. What truly joined us all together were not the transcendent acts but an accumulation of everyday things. There is nothing so significant as a million nothings all joined together.

We were interrupted by an outbreak of shelling, the reverberations of which shook the tent so hard I thought it might take to the air. That could mean only one thing: the general assault being declared. I put my tricorn on my head and made to leave the tent. As I started to duck under the flap, Amelis said something, I don’t remember what precisely. Something about Beceite. A very faraway Beceite, that small town in Aragon where we’d met, among rapist Bourbons and murderous Miquelets. Her hunger was making her delirious. Running her finger along her cheek, she begged me in a distant voice: “Martí, it’s only mashed raspberry. Don’t go, please. It’s only raspberry.”

She spread her arms wide to me. Duty called, but at the same time here was this woman who had never asked anyone for anything, saying, like a cat mewling the words, “Si us plau, si us plau.” I went to her.

I embraced her carefully, she was so thin. Otherwise, no exaggeration, I’d have snapped her ribs. Her face was bathed in sweat. The most distressing thing was being able to do nothing to ease her pain. She asked me to get the broken music box. I found it and handed it to her. When she opened it, of course no sound came out. But, smiling, she said: “Do you hear? My father invented this box, he put music in a box. And this was the song he chose. Isn’t it lovely?”

I’ve never liked the idea of lying to the sick. “We’ll get it fixed, you’ll see.”

“Martí!” she cried, her fever going up a notch. “Say you can hear it!”

No, I could not hear it. It was nothing but a broken box, one small scrap among countless objects consigned to oblivion by the enemy bombardment. I said nothing, just sighed. She knew; a high fever can sometimes bring about considerable lucidity. Those vast eyes of hers found mine.

“Shall I tell you something, Martí? The fact that you can’t hear the music is what makes you you. This is your great strong point and, at the same time, the thing that limits you. If you wanted to hear our music, you’d hear it. But you can’t, because you don’t believe in it. You don’t even try.” She added: “You’ve heard this music a thousand times. Why not now? The box is only a box — one day it was bound to break.”

I made her look me in the eye once more. “One thing, Amelis: You’re not to leave this beach. Whatever should come to pass, don’t go anywhere! If you find yourself walking on anything that isn’t sand, you’re to turn back.”

“Jefe, I’ll look after her.”

Anfán was behind me in the tent, with Nan beside him.

“Where have you been?” I cried. Anfán groaned, impish and reluctant. “For once in your life, pay attention!” I shouted. “Tonight and tomorrow, no one must leave this beach. Not you, not Nan, not Amelis. And it’s your job to make sure that’s what happens! Understood?” Screaming at Anfán was a waste of time. I changed tack. “Did you know your mother?”

“You know I didn’t.”

I gestured to Amelis, who was asleep again, or, rather, unconscious, consumed by the fever, delirious. “If you had all the mothers in the world to choose between, is there another you could possibly rather have?”

He looked down at Amelis. The only light was a nearly spent, guttering candle. I’d say, though, that a paltry flame such as that one is capable of feeling emotions.

My Lord, how beautiful a beloved person can seem in her weakness. If it weren’t for her, the four of us never would have come together. Our life would have been quite different, and doubtless very much the poorer.

Anfán took a deep breath, and for the first time, I heard the man in him speak: “As you wish, jefe. I’ll protect her. Whatever should pass, none of us will leave the beach. You have my word.”

Chin up, Martí Zuviría, never mind! Never? No, not never.

15

And so, after more than a year under siege, September 11, 1714, finally came around. It began with a forbidding artillery barrage at half past four in the morning, immediately followed by ten thousand men charging at the breaches. Dozens of company banners, officers with their sabers held aloft, the sergeants hefting halberds to show the troops the way. I don’t believe there can have been more than five or six hundred haggard militiamen opposing them in the first line.

I find it impossible to recount that September 11 in any kind of coherent order. I myself am unable to comprehend it: Fleeting images are all that remain from that longest of days, not so much a sequence of events as a heap of dismembered images. I left our tent on the beach and made my way back into the city. The church bells were frantically ringing out, all of them. Sheer chaos. What else could it have been, with the Virgin Mary elected commander in chief? Meanwhile, the Bourbons surging up and over ramparts that a child could have kicked aside.

As the sky began growing light, I climbed up onto the terrace of Casa Montserrat, the mansion of a departed botiflero, and a vantage point over the area under attack between Saint Clara and Portal Nou. And I saw what, for an engineer, was the most exasperating sight of all: the stretch we’d defended for thirteen long months, overrun by that horde of mindless slaves. A blanket of white uniforms charging in formation across the breaches: En avant, en avant! Their numbers were so great that the few being picked off by snipers up on the ramparts didn’t make any difference. Was this my fate? Was this what I’d had my senses honed to do? To suffer all the more intensely the fall of Barcelona and the extinction of a people? So that on this, our last day of freedom, I’d hear even more acutely the howls of anguish, cry more tears, and my hands would flail and grasp all the more desperately at the sinking ship?

One of the sights from that day: sections of the ramparts separated from one another by the gigantic breaches, towering up into the sky. Through the telescope, I see a particularly thin stretch of the rampart, either side of which, far below, thousands of enemies are streaming into the city. Just two soldiers are left up there, an old man and a youngster. The old man is loading rifles and handing them to the youngster to fire into the white flood of troops below. The old man isn’t quick enough with his reloading. The youngster, impotent and raging, ends up hurling the rifles themselves, the bayonets making primitive spears of them. Another fleeting image, which again comes back to me in the circular telescope sight, is of the second Bourbon wave now having taken this redoubt, and the duo having surrendered, each badly wounded. Up on the battlement, the soldiers force them to their knees before the abyss. Then each of them is kicked over the edge.

A whirl of images. Children pulling the triggers of our “organ” contraptions, point-blank, mowing down whole ranks of grenadiers. Coronela soldiers flinging grenades until the enemy overruns them, and using the last ones to blow themselves up.

A great stack of images, yes, but above and beyond any of them, prevailing in the tragedy, an appearance that enshrined that man in the memory of the righteous: Don Antonio de Villarroel Peláez. Don Antonio! What was he still doing in Barcelona? He was supposed to be miles away, out across the ocean, when he suddenly burst into a meeting between members of the high command. His booming voice.

He was supposed to be in Vienna, safe, covered in praise, and forging a future for himself at Charles’s court. But he was here. These are the facts: He had waited until the last possible moment for the government to come to their senses and restore him. But that moment didn’t come, and as he walked down to the beach of his salvation, he halted, turned around, and simply returned to the ramparts. He knew very well he was signing his own death warrant. “I wish I could die shoulder to shoulder with these men, like any other soldier,” he’d said. Why are there such men as Don Antonio in the world? I don’t know the reason why. I only know that, when they appear, it is impossible not to love them.

For a very brief moment, he and I were alone in his study. I didn’t know what to say or do. It still pains me that I failed to find the words to tell him what it meant to me that he’d come back. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Throughout the rest of the defense, Don Antonio never made a single mention of what he’d given up. Only in that moment, with no one to see or hear, did he let his gaze become abstracted and, smoothing down his uniform, say: “To hell with sailing away.”

On that September 11, the head of the government, Rafael Casanova, also played his part, though without attaining the heights of Don Antonio’s greatness. Were I an indulgent person, I’d say that Casanova was more of a tragic character than a deplorable one, trapped between his own reasoning, the reasoning of the state, and the people’s willingness to go on fighting. But I don’t happen to be an indulgent person: If you want to be beloved by your country, you have to be prepared to sacrifice yourself for it. Don Antonio, not even a Catalan, come the final hour, understood this far more clearly than all the Casanovas in the world.

Don Antonio ordered two concentric attacks. He’d lead one and Casanova would lead the other, carrying the Saint Eulalia flag at the head of the troops. Tradition states that that sacred banner should be brought out only if the city is in grave danger. Could there ever be a more grave danger? Don Antonio knew what it would do for the élan of the soldiers to see the Eulalia flying high among them.

The problem was, protocol also demanded that any attack with the sacred ensign had to be led by the city’s highest-ranking political representative. The coward Casanova, in other words. I wasn’t at the meeting, no, but it most likely took some enraged officer to point a gun at him for Casanova to put on his colonel’s uniform. Soldiering and politics don’t, or at least shouldn’t, mix. But because Casanova was, at least in name, the leader of the Coronela, that meant he really had no choice but to put on that jacket with its golden braids, mount a tired old nag, and head up the attack. His demeanor, it struck me, was like that of an actor being made to play a role he disliked: resigned but at the same time wrapped up in the new part, brandishing his sword above his tricorn, simulating passions he didn’t at all feel.

The troop left the Saint Jordi Hall. The roar from the people announced the fact. Desperate, filthy citizens tacked on to the party as it came past. People appeared at balconies and windows, blowing kisses to the violet saint. The same color, as it happened, as the jackets worn by the Sixth Battalion, which was made up of tailors, tavern owners, and tinkers, and which was in the vanguard in front of the banner.

I also remember one of the Red Pelts, still dressed in those claret robes, who rode to one side of the banner. He went along shouting up at the women in the balconies to save their prayers and come and join the sacrifice. I remember the women, who were so weak they could barely stand, propping themselves up on the balcony railings and shouting: “Doneu-nos pa i hi anirem!” Give us bread, and we’ll come.

It must have been seven in the evening when I saw them pass by on the way to the front, half army, half sword-brandishing mob. The Eulalia banner had returned to the origin of all banners: a nadir that joins men together in a single cause. Once a significant crowd had gathered, a phalanx of bayonets along its front edge, they set out to retake the bastions.

I also say: There are moments when even the stoniest hearts melt. Above the throng, the large rectangular standard rippled in the wind, the Eulalia sewn on it seeming alive. That girl, so young and sad. The banner, drawing nearer to its own demise, fluttered, and it was as though she were looking out at you — and only you.

Fleeting images, yes: I can see Costa, leaning his elbows on the stock of an empty cannon, observing the long column in tears.

“For God’s sake!” I cried. “Stop crying and give them some cover.”

He shook his head and, turning his palms up, said: “It’s over.”

So, this jumble of trained soldiers and seething civilians, they attacked. Their objective was to scour the ramparts of enemies, from Portal Nou to Saint Clara. They would have had less of a job tearing the Rock of Gibraltar out of the ocean and bringing it back to exhibit at Saint María del Mar.

Jimmy had already positioned thousands of soldiers and hundreds of sappers on and around the ramparts, in case some lunatic should come and try to retake them. The tragedy was that it wasn’t one lunatic but hundreds and hundreds of lunatics. They followed the banner of Saint Eulalia, crushed together like a herd of sheep, more concerned about protecting the standard than killing any enemies. It was a gruesome sight. Rifle fire strafed them from all sides. Dozens fell to the hail of bullets, but still the advance continued.

They came to the ramparts; the walkway around them was perhaps ten feet wide. Like rams, the two vanguards clashed. Another image from that day: the violet uniforms of our Sixth Battalion merging in bayonet combat with the whites of the enemy. Against all expectation, they overran a long stretch of the Bourbon-controlled ramparts. The multitude surrounding the violet girl thinned out as they pushed ahead, shouting battle curses and forcing the enemy back.

I was ordered to make my way to the center point of the Bourbon assault — thankfully, as it meant not having to witness the playing out of that mass suicide. Casanova, who claimed to have been injured in the leg, was evacuated from the fighting a little later. We saw him being carried past on a stretcher. I’m no surgeon, but to me, he seemed only lightly injured. He was more dejected than in physical danger, that much was certain, because when he came past us and people asked what was happening, he raised his head and said: “Go, sirs, and spur on the people, for the dangers are many.”

What no one knew at that point was that while a tourniquet was applied to his leg, his doctor was writing a certificate for him so he’d be able to flee the city. Enough about him.

Images, images, a constant stream of them. Barricades at every entrance to every street that fed onto the rampart area, to impede the Bourbon advance into the city center. Against all established siege wisdom, and to Jimmy’s surprise, taking the ramparts didn’t mean the end of the assault; it was merely the prologue. In any other siege, the defenders would have entered discussions at that point. In Barcelona, people fought on, in street skirmishes and from their windows, converting buildings into ramparts. I became an engineer once more: The streets were so narrow that small barriers could be thrown up in a heartbeat. While these parapets were being piled up by civilians, soldiers stationed themselves behind and began firing on the approaching Bourbons.

I ran into Ballester behind one of these barricades. He came as backup for the one I was helping erect. Ballester, yes, another image from that September 11, a day that would be his last. He was well aware of the fact, and know what? He seemed almost happy, loading and firing his rifle in unending succession. A kind of festive cheer had come over him, like that of someone who has sworn not to finish the night sober.

Clouds of gunpowder made it impossible to see very far. But just then, Ballester did see something, dropping his ramrod and shoving me. “Your child! And the dwarf! They’re between the lines! Look, look!”

Looking up, I could make out the two little monsters scurrying across the open ground between the Bourbon-controlled bastions and the mouth of the street we were on. Thousands of bullets flying, and a voice in my mind screaming: “What are you two doing here?” Only a few hours had passed since Anfán had made a sacred oath to me, and already it was broken. They were running, apparently without a destination, which was unusual; normally, they moved like a pair of hyenas, fixed on their goal as if they had compasses mounted to their noses. Then they went down. Amid flashes of gunfire and gunpowder vapor, I saw them fall. First Nan. Anfán stopped, began to go back for the dwarf, and then was hit himself, letting out a small cry, one more of surprise than of pain. The Bourbon volleys were coming so thick, such a lead hailstorm, that I was able to glance over the barricade for only a moment. Nan and Anfán had disappeared.

I tugged Ballester’s sleeve. “Did they get them?” I asked, sobbing. “Did you see it, are you sure?”

Ballester looked me in the eye; his silence said it all. Then a wailing sound reached our ears. Above the sound of the gunfire, the diminishing sound of a death rattle, and the words: “Father, Father, Father.” With his dying breath, Anfán had become a child once more. He’d fallen down into a rut, out of my field of vision. When Ballester spoke, it only exacerbated the torture; in a small, meek voice, he said: “He’s calling for you.”

It was all over. The end of the world was no longer only nigh: Your son calling you “Father” for the first time, and it also being the very instant before he passes away. That nameless tension that keeps us all alive then slackened in me. I inhabited an empty body for a time. I don’t know how long I was there, down on my knees, feeling that pain. The next thing I remember is Ballester’s face in front of mine: “You have to come with me,” he said.

All around, the uproar of battle continued, but the bloodbath seemed far away from me, signifying nothing. An obscene, incongruous apathy gripped me. I even burst out laughing. I mocked Ballester as he dragged me away, I mocked everything.

We made for the rearguard. Peret came into view. His very demeanor spoke, and I didn’t want to listen. My state was akin to that of a fever dream, when all we see and all we know is turned upside down. I said or perhaps thought: “I told that woman not to leave the beach.” Peret spoke, seemingly in unison with a group of people gathered around him like an assembly of ghosts: “We are at the beach, Martí.” I looked down at my feet and fell to my knees, which indeed sank into dirty sand. Out of nowhere, a question formed in my mind, one that I should have come up with a long while before: What did Anfán want to say to me? What could have forced him to come in search of me, though it had been emphatically forbidden? Lying in front of me, the body of Amelis.

“A stray bullet,” said an old voice, perhaps Peret’s.

I didn’t try to deny it; we’d seen too many dead bodies. The greenish hue under her fingernails was a clear sign. Even Ballester bit his fist, gasping. We suffered so much that September 11, the pain had to form a line.

I rubbed my cheek against hers, which had begun to turn chill. Yes: Death is a cold nowhere. And no, a cold cadaver does not come back to life. Yet just then she did: She suddenly sat up, like a tail thrashing.

Everyone in the gathering took a step back. I saw Amelis’s eyes, which had burst open, and our whole universe, everything, was collected in that look. She grabbed my chest, tried to speak. I knew she was dead, that she had come back to say something to me, only to sink forevermore. And so she did: Though it was only a moment, she came back.

As I remember it, there was a lull in the battle. All the noise was suspended in anticipation of Amelis’s words. This, of course, was not what happened. I thought all possible cruelties had occurred. But we still had one coming: the four most terrible words any father could hope to hear.

“Martí,” she said imploringly, “tingues cura d’Anfán.” Take care of Anfán.

And she was gone, a loosening of her soul more than her muscles.

How to face the impossibility of her request, the fact it had come too late? Or that her wish made a connection between me and the world, one of unbearable pain? Amelis couldn’t have known that Anfán was dead, that he had died specifically in an attempt to save her, in trying to bring me to help. Even Ballester was moved. His cheeks contracted beneath his beard, and he turned his head away so that I wouldn’t see.

Fleeting images: The next finds me at the Fossar de les Moreres, the mass burial ditch. The battle continued to rage, but the only thing concerning me was the bundle I was carrying: Amelis’s body covered in a shawl. Ballester was at my side. One of the gravediggers asked me the customary question: “One of ours?” The government had made a decree by which no Bourbon bodies were to be buried. I didn’t even bother to answer. Ballester shook his fist at the digger, who fled.

I went down to the ditch. It was a great crater in which bodies were deposited. Wisely, the Red Pelts had ordered it to be built five storeys deep. But at this point in the siege, the pile of bodies was almost up to ground level. I buried Amelis to the sound of cannons thundering. While I knelt down to deposit her body as delicately as I could, Ballester kept an eye out.

A stray bullet. After having made it through a life full of danger, rapes, and destitution, Amelis had been taken by something as ridiculous as a stray bullet. I couldn’t prevent the thought: That stray bullet was me.

I fell to my knees and, sobbing uncontrollably, said: “I killed them. Amelis. Anfán. The dwarf. All of them.”

Squinting, Ballester asked: “Mind telling me what you’re going on about?”

I spoke through gurgles, my face bathed in tears. “I designed the Bourbon trench. While I was over there, on the other side of the cordon. I thought it would be the lesser evil for the city, but I was only fooling myself.”

I wished, truly I did, that he would take out a knife and slit my throat, as he should have done in Beceite. The seven intervening years — I saw very clearly now — had all been a dream. But instead of putting an end to me, he reacted with irate skepticism.

“What are you saying?” he shouted. “Who cares about your damned calculations, all those tables and compasses? Get your head out of your books and let’s go and fight!”

“I did my best,” I said. “And not for the sake of the city, nor for my family, but for engineering. Any Maganon would have dreamed of such a trench. Faced with a recalcitrant city, and provided all the means to create the perfect trench. For all the tricks I included, all I really wanted was to better my teachers, beat Vauban’s cousin himself. I let myself be tempted, then hid that fact from myself. There was only one way to erase such a stain, which was coming back to the stronghold I’d condemned, letting the work of my hand lead to my own demise.”

Ballester tried to wrestle me to my feet, to urge me back to the front, but I held him off.

“Want to know the worst of it?” I looked for my judgment in Ballester’s eyes. Or, rather, that he would execute that judgment. To that end, I concluded: “If I had truly loved my family more than I loved engineering, if I had loved love and not vanity, I’d never have designed any trench. Neither a good one nor a bad one. An honest man serves not the devil — for good or for ill.”

“But your work hindered the devil,” he said in my defense. “Obstructing the trench, you won us a few more days in this city.”

“And for what? Look around you. If I do survive, it will always be hanging over me that I was the architect of its demise.” Ballester shook his head, but I refused to listen. “Where is truth, the authentic truth? In our deeds or in the feelings that guide them? I know I didn’t design this trench based on love or patriotism but out of vanity. Now the death of my family bears my signature.”

I cried so hard, I thought my eyes would drop from my head. Ballester knelt down beside me and, crushing my cheeks in his hands, gave me a hateful look. The world was sinking, and Ballester, I now understand, knew these would be the last words spoken between us.

“Know your problem?” he said. “That you only fight for the living. Between them, the French, the Spanish, and the Red Pelts killed my father, my mother, and my brothers. So many of my people are dead, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I won’t be able to avenge them all. Don’t fight for the living, and don’t fight for the dead, either. People in the future might speak ill of acts we’ve committed — because we got things wrong or because we failed. Fine. I’d rather be looked down on for the things I did do than the things I never did.”

I was still on my knees, shaken, weeping. He stood up. Ballester standing at his full height made me feel like a child. He added: “Do you truly think the world revolves around your damned trench? Know what I say to that? I hope it was the greatest work of your life. Because if not, what would have been the point in having taken on that bunch of braggarts dressed in white?”

Ballester then did the most loving thing one man can do for another: He lifted me to my feet.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” he entreated me. And we returned to the fray. I followed him, I think, because at that moment I hadn’t the slightest desire to outlive Amelis and Anfán. Or my trench.

A number of units from the Coronela, during their retreat, had taken up positions on the absurd unfinished cutting, the ditch inside the ramparts that had been intended to contain the Bourbon assault. Dozens of the militiamen, covered in mud after all the rain, had taken shelter in it and were leaning out and firing at floor height. The wave of Bourbon soldiers was crashing down on them — they’d end up trapped if they stayed down there. Ballester and I leaped down into the six-foot cutting and began shoving and urging them to get out. “Out of the cutting!” we cried. “Fall back!” Ballester and his men forced them up and out.

I went along shouting, pointing the way to the first line of streets behind us. “To the buildings! Occupy them and shoot from the windows!”

We carried on, forcing them out of the cutting. Before we knew it, the Bourbons were upon us. Dozens, hundreds, of white uniforms jumped down, brandishing their bayonets. They had come from the captured ramparts; it was at least a regiment. Down in the ditch and around it, Barcelonans and Frenchmen gored one another. I now tried to scrabble out myself, but as I was doing so, someone grabbed me by the neck and threw me to the ground. I remember, as I sank into the mud, thinking disparagingly: Why not just knife me in the back? The answer was that the person who had yanked me back down was no other than my good friend Don Antoine Bardonenche.

He’d been tasked with clearing the cutting; the Frenchmen around us wreaking havoc with their bayonets were his escort. It had turned out to be a devastating day even for him. His pristine white uniform was dirty for once, and his face smeared. There were blood spatters all over his chest.

He pointed his sword at my nose and said: “Mon ami, mon ennemi. Rendez-vous.”

“Ah, non!” I replied in the offended tone of someone asked to pay a debt he does not owe. “Ça jamais!”

That’s right: Longlegs Zuvi, the rat, refusing the very thing that had been in motion since the siege began. I didn’t even have Peret’s sword about my person, so, very nobly, I threw a handful of mud in Bardonenche’s eyes, turned, and ran. While his and Ballester’s men continued laying into one another with bayonets, Bardonenche wiped the mud from his eyes and raced after me. I tripped over a rut, landing face-to-face with a dead soldier. I grabbed the man’s rifle and, gasping, turned the bayonet on myself like a spear. Halting, Bardonenche sighed. “Don’t,” he said.

Pity for Bardonenche — pity for me — pity for all of us. His expression was more than merely downcast: It was commiseration itself. I, of course, felt like a rat cornered by a tiger. Imagine a zero the size of the moon: That was how likely I was to overcome Bardonenche, Europe’s finest swordsman.

I still think Martí Zuviría should, by rights, have died that September 11, in that waterlogged cutting. But just then Ballester leaped like a panther from the edge of the ditch, and he and Bardonenche set to tussling in the mud. I wasn’t stupid enough to let such a chance go begging, and flexing my long legs, I launched myself out of the cutting.

White uniforms were everywhere; the entire cutting was being overrun by hundreds of Frenchmen. The men accompanying Bardonenche tried to protect their captain, and the Miquelets theirs. Ballester’s men fired and thrust their blades in a frenzy, but the cascade of Bourbons intensified. The clamor of the battle was appalling: Across the city, more than forty thousand rifles were exchanging fire, so disorderly and at such a pace that it sounded like a constant drumroll. We had to fall back immediately.

For the second time, I addressed Ballester by his first name. “Esteve!” I howled, on all fours at the edge of the cutting. “Get out, for the love of God, get up here now! You don’t know who you’re dealing with! Surti!”

Ballester had bargained on a French captain being more skilled in martial arts than he was, but by turning it into a brawl in the confines of the cutting, he’d hoped to level the field. Bardonenche’s long arms kept hitting up against the walls, preventing him from using his skills. They punched, bit, and scratched each other like wild animals.

Still, not even Ballester could withstand a swordsman like Bardonenche for long. The latter eventually managed to force some space between them and, with a lightning-fast thrust, ran Ballester through at stomach height. The blade entered up to the hilt. Ballester, with half the sword projecting from his lower back, turned his head, looked up, saw me, and said something that I’ll take to my grave: “Go! You’re more important than we are!”

His last words. Next came a deafening guttural cry that could be heard over and above the din of the battle. His fingers sank into the ground like grappling hooks, and he looked Bardonenche in the eye. Bardonenche threw back his head, but — and this was his error — didn’t move away. His most sensible option would have been to let his saber go and kick Ballester’s body clear. In Bardonenche’s world, I suppose, it was bad form to drop your weapon in such a fashion. Honor was the death of him.

Bardonenche cried out, his chin high, as Ballester, summoning what little strength remained in him, sank his teeth into the Frenchman’s neck. They both toppled into the mud. They writhed together, and Ballester’s hands came upon something Bardonenche was carrying. A small leather pouch containing used bullets: the pouch of Busquets, the old Miquelet from Mataró. Ballester took it and forced it into his enemy’s mouth, ramming it down his throat with bloodied fingers. Bardonenche, his body in spasms, struggled to get clear.

The rest of the Miquelets had fallen, and several Frenchmen came to their captain’s aid, bayoneting Ballester’s body. In the melee, and with the two bodies intertwined, they also managed to finish off Bardonenche by stabbing him a few times. By the end, the pair were a single mangled lump enveloped in thick mud. Two men with such different trajectories, so perfectly unalike one from the other, and in their demise, unified by death — as though their destiny had been to end up in each other’s arms.

I turned and I ran as never before. Corre, Zuvi! Run! Only when there was no breath left in me did I finally come to a halt. Wheezing, with no thought for where I was, I dropped to the ground. I couldn’t believe they were all dead. Amelis, Anfán, Nan. Ballester. And still the battle was raging. More images: brave men, the kind I never thought I’d see give in, fleeing home; and cowards, who had never shown their faces anywhere near the ramparts, taking on the enemy armed with hatchets. I’d need a whole page to list the nobles who, back in June 1713, had voted against resisting, and come September 11, 1714, died defending their city.

Questions abound. So many pointless sacrifices — why? Was it worth filling the world with so many tragic, extraordinary tales, all those brilliant, meteoric ends? We know what happened afterward. All officers put in chains, hauled to Castile, and Don Antonio first among them. The Saint Eulalia flag captured and transported to the Atocha shrine in Madrid. The entire country under a military regime for decades. And Barcelona in the hands of that mercenary murderer, the Antwerp butcher, Verboom.

My thoughts turn to another of the Miquelet captains, Josep Moragues. He was tied to the back of a cart and dragged the length and breadth of the city before being decapitated and his arms and legs cut off. They placed his head in a cage and had no qualms about hanging it from one of the city gates. There his bare skull stayed, as mockery of and a warning to the rebels, for twelve long years — twelve, as all the while his widow’s protests went unheard.

Could there be any greater ignominy than that of Moragues? Yes, perhaps that of a man named Manuel Desvalls. And not because his body was subjected to torments but because he didn’t die from his treatment. Desvalls had commanded troops outside Barcelona. When the victors exiled him, he couldn’t have had any idea what the rest of his days would hold. Remarkably, he lived to a hundred. Can you imagine? A larger proportion of his life spent outside his home than in it, his return never allowed. A hundred years — a century. And I’m headed the same way.

Or should I talk about the women, our women, all the women who sustained us and who spat when we said they couldn’t fight on the bastions? Or perhaps Castellví, Francesc Castellví, our starry-eyed captain of the Valencian company? When he was exiled, he chose the path of the writer or, more specifically, his own dead end. He stubbornly dedicated his life to chronicling our war, corresponding for decades with participants from either side, men from dozens of countries. He wrote a book five thousand pages long and more, an impartial testimony of all the great deeds. And do you know what happened? No publisher would touch it. He died without a single page making it into the public domain.

But above all, my thoughts turn to Don Antonio, Don Antonio de Villarroel Peláez, renouncing glory and honor, family and even life itself, and all for an allegiance that made no sense — to a group of nameless men. He, a son of Castile, embodying what was good about that harsh land, sacrificing himself for Barcelona, no less. And his reward? Infinite pain, eternal oblivion.

In my delirium, another of my tragedies occurred to me: With Anfán dead, I had a son remaining, one I’d never meet, and who would never learn that his father had fought and died defending the freedoms of a people he’d also never know about. But no, I thought, my pain wasn’t unusual: When we lost and all of us perished, all our children would be educated by the victors.

The world: this answerless question. And inhabiting its trifling circumference, the fools who seek the answer. All for nothing.

And yet the doubt remains. The fact is, all those men and women did not have to go up the ramparts. They could have stayed in their houses, let the tyrant in. Resign themselves to it, get down on their knees, beg for their lives. But they didn’t. They fought. Knowing full well how slim their chances were, they held out for thirteen months of inexorable terror. Dying for the sake of a word, dying so their children could say for the rest of time, even if only under their breath: “My father defended our bastions.” This was the way Ballester — all the Ballesters — thought.

After Ballester’s death, I drifted, neither dead nor alive. For how long, and along which streets, I do not know. The gunfire was an innocuous murmur, not worthy of attention. Then someone was beckoning me: “Don Antonio’s calling everyone together,” the person said. Images, voids, morasses in the memory. But the words “Don Antonio” could bring the dead back to life.

Suddenly, I find myself in Plaza Born, the square at Barcelona’s very center. Not heeding the gunfire, Don Antonio is gathering a troop on the cobblestones. And what a troop. The remaining few. Remnants of the Coronela, wounded men dragged from hospital beds, young boys, some women. A couple of priests.

Don Antonio was about to launch the second counterattack, aimed at retaking the ramparts. An absurdity, given that the Bourbons had reached the far side of Plaza Born. There, thousands of white uniforms had gathered, and the first rank was kneeling. For the rest, aside from Don Antonio’s steed, I do not believe there were more than a few dozen cavalrymen. The others were lining up like infantry, with one or two officers trying to introduce order to the ranking.

Don Antonio, up on his horse at the front, made a brief speech. But the din was too great for us to hear him. And it made no difference what he had to say. The odd bullet grazed his body, and then one bounced off his saber. Out of the thousands and thousands of shots fired that day, the sound of that one bullet has stayed with me, metal on metal. Don Antonio’s response was to raise his saber even higher. I looked at him. And shall I tell you what? He was illuminated.

No, the word “happiness” doesn’t fit him. Don Antonio was never happy, just as fish may not see the sun until being torn from the ocean depths. He was about other things. He was going to surpass a threshold that was particular to him, and he had found the opportunity to do so without compromising his honor. That day — finally — it wouldn’t be him asking the impossible of his men but the other way around. Joyfully, he led them on their mad sortie.

And The Word? It’s ironic, because I began this book prepared to reveal it, and now, after all these pages, this word — this unique word — doesn’t matter. Because when it came to that final charge, we were beyond words.

This was The Word. These children, these women, these men from a hundred different places. All united behind Don Antonio’s horse. Lining up higgledy-piggledy, about to set out on a cavalry charge without any horses. Fewer than a thousand versus fifty thousand. And yet The Word may be reflected in the dictionaries. A pale reflection, very pale, but a reflection after all.

We attacked, shrieking like the savages who sacked Rome. The Bourbons were in perfect formation on the far side of the square. Their ranks, well stocked with men, reaching a long way back, thousands of rifles pointing straight at us. We were peppered with bullets. Volley after volley, perfectly coordinated. Their officers calling out, Feu, feu, feu! My companions falling left and right. The sounds of weeping, wailing, repentance. Don Antonio, like a commander out of antiquity, leading from the front, sheer madness, galloping forward with saber pointed. They shot him down, of course.

His steed was knocked onto its right flank, its huge frame crushing Don Antonio underneath. His knee ended up trapped between the saddle and the Plaza Born cobblestones, his bones snapping like twigs.

The horse thrashed about as though it had been placed over a campfire. It contorted its neck and let out a stream of dung. Goodness knows why, but its whinnying and its shitting remain firmly fixed in my memory. I was the first to go and kneel down next to Don Antonio. I grabbed him under his arms and heaved him out from under the beast. It took me a few moments to notice the look that was in his eye.

It was as though Don Antonio didn’t want to be rescued. He just lay there on the ground, half his body trapped beneath the horse. Then I felt one of his large hands grab me by the lapel of my uniform. He gave a violent tug, bringing my face close to his, and then spoke the closest thing to The Word that I would ever hear. And it was spoken not by an emperor in his most august hour but by a general defeated, fallen; I did not hear The Word from the mouth of my own captain but from a man who had crossed over from enemy latitudes, a man who had left everything to join the ranks of the weak and shelterless, the accursed few, and to lay down his life for them.

Don Antonio whispered into my ear: “You must give your whole self.”

My head was so empty, my body so detached from my being, that to be quite honest, my memory is a jumble now. I’ve gone back over this particular moment — everyone galloping forward in the pendulum of death, Don Antonio down on the Plaza Born cobblestones, his steed shitting in death, thousands of bullets zinging past our ears — and perhaps, only perhaps, memory alters what it was that Don Antonio said.

Because sometimes, when I am strolling through autumn fields, I find myself overcome by a burst of memories that are not so bitter. And then I see Don Antonio’s large hand on my lapel and hear him speaking incredibly kindly: “Give yourself, fiyé.” At other times, when I can afford to buy myself a little of that syrupy schnapps, the words I read on Don Antonio’s lips are more martial: “Always give yourself, Zuviría, always; that’s what matters.” At other times, when I am desensitized by foul-smelling liquor, very drunk indeed, the face I see down on the ground of the Plaza Born is not Don Antonio’s at all but Vauban’s. And it is the marquis who pulls me close, and he says: “Cadet, you have passed.”

Yes, I no longer have any sense of who said what or how. All these decades and decades that have gone by, all those many turns around the sun. But what difference does it make, ultimately? Vauban said, “You must know”; Don Antonio said, “Give yourself.” And there, in that city square, the detritus of war all around, The Word crumbled under the weight of its own paradox: “You cannot know until you give yourself, and you cannot give yourself until you know.”

A number of officers came over to try and help the maimed commander. Don Antonio did finally get up, his splintered leg bone protruding through his breeches, and he started pushing everyone away.

“Don’t stop the charge!” he bellowed in his resounding Castilian voice. “Don’t stop! No falling back, not as long as I still draw breath. You sons of bitches — no one!”

Dear Don Antonio. How fate scorned him. Even when it came to that September 11, the glorious death he’d hoped for was denied him. Knocked from his horse and severely wounded, he was dragged off to the hospital by his aides. I can still see him struggling to shake off the men who were helping him, as though they were his enemies. Those of us who remained resumed the charge.

During life’s worst moments, it is incredible how calm one’s thoughts can be. Rightly, perhaps, because once you find yourself on the summit, the mountainsides no longer matter — you’ll never be going down them again. As I charged, all I thought was: Very well, at least that Fifth Point is mine now.

Thousands of white beetles raised their rifles in unison, training their sights upon us. We rushed headlong at them. We were no more than fifty in number now, a mix of old men, widows, cavalrymen without horses, horses without riders: my ragged fellow Barcelonans. The Bourbons had brought five cannons and made a battery on a mound of rubble, above and behind the infantry. Grapeshot, was my thought as I continued to hurtle forward, they’ve loaded them with grapeshot. My other thought being: They’ll fire the instant after a volley from these white beetles. I saw one of those round cannon barrels staring me down. I saw a flash of white and yellow.

I was blown backward twenty or thirty feet. All I knew was that something had happened to my face. At first, curiously, it seemed more associated with a feeling of nakedness than death. I was beyond now. And I discovered that Amelis had been right, yes, she had: Anyone who wants to hear a piece of music, hears it. Destroyed, monstrous from that moment forth, I heard that music over the noise of wailing and explosions. “Give yourself, Zuviría, your whole self.”

I ought to have understood far sooner — when they put a noose around my neck in the Bourbon camp, or even when I sat beside Vauban on his deathbed. “Summarize the optimum defense.” It was this and no more — this was all. We are fallen leaves that linger on. Stars that burst forth in light, fables squandered. Truths whose only reward is lucidity itself. The smell of warm shit running down the legs of ranks of men. Blind telescopes, inane periscopes, lamentations. Funnels imbued with affection, that boy on our prow laughing, like dolphin laughter. The far side of the river. Admitting that we’ll always be looking out at the landscape through the keyhole of the dungeon, knowing that ears of corn fall but do not complain. My shredded spirits, my broken calculations. Give yourself, Zuviría, give.

And discovering — beyond the utmost extreme, beyond the Euphrates and the Rubicon, where there are no longer any tears, oh, the greatness and the consolation of the few and the poor, of the weak and forlorn — that the darker our twilight hours, the more blessed will be the dawn of those who will come after us.