The King's Gold

by Arturo Perez-Riverte

  Our comrades were putting on a brave face like the practiced swordsmen they were, fighting with the professional resolve of someone who has bet all his money on the knave of spades, but there were far more men on board the galleon than we had expected, and they were gradually driving us back toward the gunwale over which we had boarded. At least I can swim, I thought. The deck was full of motionless bodies or moaning figures dragging themselves along, and causing us to stumble at every step. I started to feel afraid, not of death exactly—death is of no importance, Nicasio Ganzúa had said in the prison in Seville—but of shame, mutilation, defeat, and failure.

  Someone else attacked. He wasn’t tall and blond like most Flemings but sallow-skinned and bearded. He struck out at me, grasping his sword with both hands, but had little luck. I kept my head and stood firm, and the third or fourth time that he drew back his arm, I stuck my sword into his breast swift as lightning, right up to the guard. My face almost touched his when I did so—I could feel his breath on mine—and we crashed to the floor together, with me still grasping the hilt, and I heard the blade of my sword snap as his back hit the deck. Then, for good measure, I stabbed him five or six times in the belly. At first, I was surprised to hear him cry out in Spanish and, for a moment, thought I must have made a mistake and killed one of my own. The light from a lantern near the quarterdeck, however, fell on an unfamiliar face. So there were Spaniards on board too, I thought. Given the fellow’s general appearance and the doublet he was wearing, he was clearly a professional swordsman.

  I got to my feet, confused. This altered things, and not, by God, for the better. I tried to think what it could mean, but in the white heat of fighting there was no time to mull things over. I looked for some weapon other than my dagger, and found a cutlass; it had a short, broad blade and an enormous guard on the hilt. It felt satisfyingly heavy in my hand. Unlike an ordinary sword, with its more subtle blade and sharp point to inflict penetrating wounds, the cutlass was excellent for slashing one’s way through a throng. Which is what I did, chaf, chaf, impressed by the slick sound it made as I struck. I finished up next to a small group composed of the mulatto Campuzano, who continued to fight despite a great gash to his forehead, and El Caballero de Illescas, who was battling on exhausted, with little resolve, clearly seeking the first opportunity to hurl himself into the sea.

  An enemy sword glittered before me. I raised the cutlass to deflect the blow and had barely completed that move when, with a sudden sense of panic, I realized my error. But it was too late, and at that moment, near the small of my back, something sharp and metallic pierced my buff coat, entering the flesh. I shuddered to feel the steel slide sleekly between my ribs.

  A fleeting thought went through Diego Alatriste’s mind as he assumed the en garde position. It all made sense: the gold, Luis de Alquézar, the presence of Gualterio Malatesta in Seville and now here, on board the Flemish galleon. The Italian was acting as escort to the cargo, which is why they had encountered such unexpectedly stiff resistance: most of the men he had been fighting were Spanish mercenaries like them, not sailors. In fact, this was a fight to the death between dogs of the same pack.

  He had no time to think anything more, because after the initial surprise—Malatesta seemed as taken aback as he—the Italian advanced on him, black and menacing, sword foremost. As if by magic, the captain’s weariness vanished. There is no greater tonic to the humors than an ancient hatred, and his burned as brightly as ever. The desire to kill proved stronger than mere survival instinct. Alatriste moved faster than his adversary, for when it came to the first thrust, he was already on guard, deflecting it with one short, sharp flick, sending Malatesta staggering backward as the point of his sword came within an inch of his face. When the captain bore down upon him again, he noticed that the bastard wasn’t even whistling his usual wretched little tune—ti-ri-tu, ta-ta—or anything else for that matter.

  Before the Italian could recover, Alatriste moved in close, wielding his sword and jabbing with his knife, so that Malatesta had no alternative but to continue backing away, looking for an opportunity to get in his first proper strike. They clashed fiercely right beneath the steps leading to the quarterdeck, and then, still fighting, traveled as far as the shrouds on the other side of the ship, in hand-to-hand combat, wielding their daggers, the guards of their swords locked together. Then the Italian lost his balance when he collided with the cascabel on one of the bronze cannon positioned there; Alatriste savored the look of fear in his enemy’s eyes, then turned sideways on and gave a left thrust and then a right, point and reverse, but as luck would have it, he performed that last slashing attack with the flat of his sword not the edge. This was enough to provoke a ferocious yelp of glee from Malatesta, who, sly as a snake, drove his dagger forward with such vigor that if a startled Alatriste had not jumped out of the way, he would have surrendered his soul there and then.

  “Well, well,” murmured Malatesta, out of breath, “what a small world.”

  He still appeared surprised to find his old foe on board. For his part, the captain said nothing, but merely waited for the next onslaught. They paused, studying each other, swords and daggers in hand, crouched and ready to join battle again. All around them, the fighting continued, and Alatriste’s men were still getting the worst of it. Malatesta glanced across at them.

  “This time, Captain, you lose. This time, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.”

  The Italian was smiling serenely, as black as the Fates themselves, the murky light from the lantern throwing into sharp relief the scars and pockmarks on his face.

  “I hope,” he added, “you haven’t got the boy involved in this scrimmage.”

  That was one of Malatesta’s weak points, thought Alatriste as he made a downward thrust: he talked too much and thus opened up gaps in his defense. The point of his sword caught the Italian’s left arm, forcing him to drop his dagger with an oath. The captain took immediate advantage of this “gap” and gave such a fearsomely fast, low thrust with his dagger that the blade broke when he missed and hit the cannon instead. For a moment, he and Malatesta stood very close, almost embracing, looking at each other. They both swiftly drew back their swords to gain some space and try to get their knife in before the other one did; then the captain, resting his free—badly bruised—hand on the cannon, gave the Italian a sly kick that sent him slamming into the gunwale and the shrouds. At that point, behind them, they heard loud shouts coming from the waist of the ship, and a renewed clatter of swords spread throughout the deck. Alatriste did not turn round, intent as he was on his enemy, but from the expression on the latter’s face, suddenly grim and desperate, he could tell that Sebastián Copons must finally have boarded at the prow. To confirm this, the Italian opened his mouth and let out a stream of blasphemies in his mother tongue, something about il cazzo di Cristo and la sporca Madonna.

  Pressing my hands to my wound, I managed to drag myself over to the gunwale, where I could lean against some coiled ropes. I unfastened my clothes so that I could find out what damage had been done to my right side, but I could see nothing in the darkness. It hardly hurt at all, apart from the ribs bruised by the steel blade. I could feel the blood running gently over my fingers, down my waist to my thighs, and onto the already gore-soaked deck. I had to do something, I thought, or else bleed to death like a stuck pig. This idea made me feel faint, and I took deep breaths of air, struggling to remain conscious; fainting was the surest way to bleed to death. All around, the struggle continued, and everyone was far too occupied for me to ask for help, plus, of course, it might be an enemy who came to my aid, and an enemy would blithely slit my throat. And so I decided to keep quiet and manage on my own. Sliding slowly down onto my good side, I poked a finger into the wound to find out how deep it was—only about two inches, I reckoned. My new buff coat had more than repaid the twenty escudos I had given for it. I could still breathe easily, which meant that my lung was presumably unharmed, but the blood continued to flow, and I was gr
owing weaker by the minute. I’ve got to stop the flow, I said to myself, or else order a mass for my soul right now. Anywhere else, a handful of earth would have been enough to clot the blood, but here there was nothing, not even a clean handkerchief. Somehow or other, I had kept my dagger with me, because it was there gripped between my legs. I cut off a section of my shirttail and pushed it into the wound. This stung most violently—indeed, it hurt so much that I had to bite my lip in order not to cry out.

  I was beginning to lose consciousness. I’ve done all I could, I thought, trying to console myself before falling into the black hole opening up at my feet. I wasn’t thinking about Angélica or about anything else. As I grew steadily weaker, I rested my head against the gunwale, and then it seemed to me that everything around me was moving. It must be my head spinning, I decided. But then I noticed that the noise of battle had abated and all the shouting and the ruckus were happening farther off, toward the waist of the ship and toward the prow. A few men ran past, jumping over me, almost kicking me in their haste to escape and plunge into the water. I heard splashes and cries of panic. I looked up, bewildered. Someone had apparently climbed the mainmast and was cutting the gaskets, because the mainsail suddenly unfurled and dropped down, half filled by the breeze. Then my mouth twisted into a foolish, happy grimace intended as a smile, for I knew then that we had won, that the group boarding at the prow had managed to cut the anchor cable, and the galleon was now drifting in the night toward the sandbanks of San Jacinto.

  I hope I have what it takes and that I don’t give in, thought Diego Alatriste, steadying himself again and grasping his sword. I hope this Sicilian dog has the decency not to ask for mercy, because I’m going to kill him anyway, and I don’t want to do it when he’s disarmed. With that thought, and spurred on by the urgent need to finish the business there and then and make no last-minute errors, he gathered together what strength he had and unleashed a series of furious thrusts, so fast and brutal that even the best fencer in the world would have been unable to riposte. Malatesta retreated, defending himself with difficulty, but he still had sufficient sangfroid, when the captain was delivering his final thrust, to make a high, oblique slashing movement with his knife that missed the captain’s face by a hair’s breadth. This pause was enough for Malatesta to cast a rapid glance around him, to see how things stood on the deck, and to realize that the galleon was drifting toward the shore.

  “I was wrong, Alatriste. This time you win.”

  He had barely finished speaking when the captain made a jab at his eye with the point of his sword, and the Italian ground his teeth and let out a scream, raising the back of his free hand to his cut face, now streaming with blood. Even then he showed great aplomb and managed to strike out furiously and blindly, almost piercing Alatriste’s buff coat and forcing him to retreat a little.

  “Oh, go to hell,” muttered Malatesta. “You and the gold.”

  Then he hurled his sword at the captain, hoping to hit his face, scrambled onto the shrouds, and leapt like a shadow into the darkness. Alatriste ran to the gunwale, lashing the air with his blade, but all he could hear was a dull splash in the black waters. And he stood there, stock-still and exhausted, staring stupidly into the dark sea.

  “Sorry I’m late, Diego,” said a voice behind him.

  Sebastián Copons was at his side, breathing hard, his scarf still tied around his head and his sword in his hand, his face covered in blood as if by a mask. Alatriste nodded, his thoughts still absent.

  “Many losses?” asked the captain.

  “About half.”

  “And Íñigo?”

  “Not too bad. A small wound to the chest but no damage to the lung.”

  Alatriste nodded again, and continued staring at the sinister black stain of the sea. Behind him, he heard the triumphant shouts of his men, and the screams of the last defenders of the Niklaasbergen having their throats cut as they surrendered.

  I felt better once I had stanched the flow of blood and the strength returned to my legs. Sebastián Copons had put a makeshift bandage on my wound, and with the help of Bartolo Cagafuego I went to join the others at the foot of the quarterdeck steps. Various men were clearing the deck by throwing corpses overboard, first plundering them for any objects of value they might find. The bodies dropped into the sea with a macabre splash, and I never found out exactly how many of the ship’s crew, Flemish and Spanish, died that night. Fifteen or twenty, possibly more. The others had jumped overboard during the fighting and were swimming or drowning in the wake left by the galleon, which was now heading for the sandbanks, nudged along by a breeze from the northeast.

  On the deck, still slippery with blood, lay our own dead. Those of us who had boarded at the stern had borne the brunt. There they lay, motionless, hair disheveled, eyes open or closed, in the precise pose in which the Fates had struck: Sangonera, Mascarúa, El Caballero de Illescas, and the Murcian, Pencho Bullas. Guzmán Ramírez had been lost to the sea, and Andresito el de los Cincuenta was moaning softly as he lay huddled and dying next to a gun carriage, a doublet thrown over him to cover his spilled guts. Less badly wounded were Enríquez el Zurdo, the mulatto Campuzano, and Saramago el Portugués. There was another corpse stretched out on deck, and I stared at it for a while in surprise at the unexpectedness of the sight: the accountant Olmedilla’s eyes remained half open, as if, right up until the last moment, he had kept watch to ensure that his duty to those who paid his salary was duly carried out. He was rather paler than usual, his customary ill-tempered sneer fixed forever beneath the mousy mustache, as if he regretted not having had time to set everything down in ink and in a neat hand on the standard official document. The mask of death made him look more than usually insignificant, very still and very alone. They told me he had boarded along with the group at the prow, clambering over ropes with touching ineptitude, lashing out blindly with a sword he barely knew how to use, and that he had died at once, without a murmur of complaint, and all for some gold that was not his own, for a king whom he had glimpsed only occasionally from afar, who did not know his name, and who would not even have spoken to him had he walked past him in a room.

  When Alatriste saw me, he came over and gently touched the wound, then placed one hand on my shoulder. By the light of the lantern I could see that his eyes retained the same absorbed expression as during the fighting, indifferent to everything around us.

  “Pleased to see you, lad.”

  But I knew this wasn’t true. He might well feel pleased later on, when his pulse had returned to normal and order was restored, but at that moment, his words were mere words. His thoughts were still fixed on Gualterio Malatesta and on the galleon now drifting toward the sandbanks of San Jacinto. He scarcely looked at our dead comrades and gave Olmedilla’s body only the most cursory of glances. Nothing seemed to surprise him, or alter the fact that he was still alive and still had things to do. He dispatched Juan Eslava to the leeward side to report on whether we had yet reached the sandbank or the shallows; he ordered Juan Jaqueta to make sure that no enemies remained hidden on board; and repeated the order that no one, for any reason, should go belowdecks. On pain of death, he said somberly, and Jaqueta, after looking at him hard, nodded. Then, accompanied by Sebastián Copons, Alatriste went down into the bowels of the ship. I would not have missed this for the world, and so I took advantage of my position as my master’s page and followed behind, despite the pain from my wound, and doing my best to make no sudden movements that might make it bleed still more.

  Copons was carrying a lantern and a pistol he’d picked up from the deck, and Alatriste had his sword unsheathed. We scoured every berth and hold, but found no one—we saw a table set, with the food untouched on the dozen or so plates—and finally we reached some steps that led down into the darkness. At the bottom was a door closed with a great iron bar and two padlocks. Copons handed me the lantern and went in search of a boarding ax, and it took only a few blows to break down the door. I held the lantern up to light the int
erior.

  “God’s teeth!” murmured Copons.

  There were the gold and silver for which we had fought and killed. Stored away like ballast in the hold, the treasure was piled up in various barrels and boxes, all roped securely together. The ingots and bars lining the hold glowed like some extraordinary golden dream. In the distant mines of Peru and Mexico, far from the light of the sun, thousands of Indian slaves, under the lash of the overseer, had ruined their health and lost their lives in order that this precious metal should reach these shores, and all to repay the Empire’s debts, to finance the armies and wars in which Spain was enbroiled with half of Europe, to swell the fortunes of bankers, officials, and unscrupulous aristocrats, and, in this case, to line the pockets of the king himself. The gold bars glinted in Captain Alatriste’s dark pupils and in Copons’s wide eyes. And I watched, fascinated.

  “What fools we are, Diego,” said Copons.

  And there was no doubt about it, we were fools. I saw the captain slowly nod agreement. We were fools not to hoist the sails—had we known how to do it—and to keep sailing, not toward the sandbanks but out toward the open sea, into waters that bathed shores inhabited by free men, with no master, no god, and no king.

  “Holy Mother!” said a voice behind us.

  We turned around. El Bravo de los Galeones and the sailor Suárez were standing on the steps, staring at the treasure, slack-jawed with amazement. They were carrying their weapons in their hands and, over their shoulders, sacks into which they had been stashing anything of value they came across.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Alatriste.