The King's Gold

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  In the cortège I spotted the Conde-Duque de Olivares, cutting as imposing a figure as ever, both physically and in the way his every gesture and look exuded absolute power; also present was the elegant young son of the Duque de Medina Sidonia, the Conde de Niebla, who was accompanying Their Majesties, along with the flower of Seville’s nobility. The count was then only twenty years old or so, and a long way from the time when, as ninth Duque de Medina Sidonia, hounded by the enmity and envy of Olivares and weary of the crown’s rapacious demands on his prosperous estates—whose value had increased because of Sanlúcar de Barrameda’s role in the route to and from the Indies—he was drawn into a plot with Portugal to turn Andalusia into an independent kingdom, a conspiracy that brought him dishonor, ruin, and disgrace. Behind him came a large retinue of ladies and gentlemen, including the queen’s ladies-in-waiting. And as I searched among them, my heart turned over, because Angélica de Alquézar was there too, exquisitely dressed in yellow velvet trimmed with gold braid, and daintily holding up her skirt, which was held out stiffly by an ample farthingale. Beneath her fine lace mantilla, the same golden ringlets that had brushed my face only hours before gleamed in the afternoon sun. I tried frantically to push my way through the crowd to reach her but was prevented from doing so by the broad back of a Burgundian guard. Thus Angélica passed by only a few steps away without seeing me. I tried to catch her blue eyes, but she moved off without reading in mine the mixture of reproach and scorn and love and madness troubling my mind.

  But let us change scenes again, for I promised to tell you about our visit to the royal prison and about Nicasio Ganzúa’s final supper. Ganzúa was a prince among outlaws, a notorious ruffian from the quarter known as La Heria, a fine example of the criminal classes of Seville, and much admired by his fellow ruffians. The next day, to the discordant sound of drums and preceded by a cross, he was to be marched from the prison to have a rope placed around his neck, a rope that would rob him of his final breath. For this reason, the most illustrious members of that brotherhood of the blade were gathering—with all the requisite gravity, stoicism, and solemnity—to join him for a final supper. This unusual way of bidding farewell to a comrade was known, in criminal jargon, as echar tajada. And it was a perfectly normal occurrence, for everyone knew that a life of crime or “hard graft”—the common term at the time for earning one’s living by the sword or by other illicit means—usually ended in the galleys, plowing the seas, hands firmly grasping the neck of an oar, beneath the lash of the galleymaster, or else in a fatal dose of that much more dependable and highly contagious disease: the malady of the rope, all too common a malaise amongst rogues.

  Nothing ’scapes the maw of time,

  Scoundrels barely reach their prime

  Before the hangman stops their crime.

  A dozen or so inebriated male voices were softly singing these words when, at the first watch, a constable—whose hand had been greased and spirits lifted with Alatriste’s bribe of a silver piece of eight—led us to the infirmary, which is where they put any prisoners about to be executed. Far better pens than mine have described the picaresque life lived within the prison’s three gates, barred windows, and dark corridors, and the curious reader wishing to know more should turn to don Miguel de Cervantes, Mateo Alemán, or Cristóbal de Chaves. I will merely relate what I saw on that first visit, when the doors had been closed, and the prisoners who enjoyed the favor of the mayor or of the prison guards and were allowed to come and go as they pleased were all back snug in their cells—apart, that is, from the even more privileged few who, by reason of social position or wealth, could sleep wherever they chose. Wives, whores, and relatives had also left the building, and the four taverns and inns that served the prison parish—wine courtesy of the prison governor and water courtesy of the innkeeper—were closed until the following day, as were the gaming tables in the courtyard and the stalls selling food and vegetables. In short, this miniature Spain had gone to sleep, along with the bugs in the walls and the fleas in the blankets, even in the very best cells, which prisoners with the wherewithal could rent for six reales a month from the undergovernor, who had bought his post for four hundred ducados from the governor, who, as corrupt as they come, grew rich on bribes and contraband of every sort. As in the rest of Spain, everything could be bought and sold, and you could more safely rely on money than you could on justice. All of which only confirmed the truth of that old Spanish proverb, that says, Why go hungry, when it’s dark and there are another man’s fig trees to pick?

  On our way to the supper, we had an unexpected encounter. We had just walked down one long, railinged corridor and past the women’s prison—on the left as one entered—when we came to a room that was temporary home to those about to be sent to the galleys. A few inmates were standing there behind the bars, chatting. They peered out at us. A large torch on the wall lit up that part of the corridor, and by its light one of the men inside recognized my master.

  “Either I’m blind drunk,” he said, “or that’s Captain Alatriste.”

  We paused. The man who had spoken was very tall and burly, and he had thick, black eyebrows that met in the middle. He was wearing a filthy shirt and breeches made of rough cloth.

  “Ye gods, Cagafuego,” said the captain, “what are you doing in Seville?”

  In his delight and surprise, the giant opened his huge mouth and beamed from ear to ear, revealing, in place of an upper set of teeth, only a black hole.

  “As you can see, they’re packing me off to the galleys. I’ve got six years of pounding the waves to look forward to.”

  “The last time I saw you, you were safe in San Ginés church.”

  “Oh, that was a long time ago,” said Bartolo Cagafuego with a stoical shrug. “You know what life’s like.”

  “And what crime are you paying for this time?”

  “Oh, for my crimes and for other people’s. They say that me and my comrades here”—his comrades smiled fiercely from the back of the cell—“robbed a few bars in Cava Baja and a few travelers at the Venta de Bubillos, near the Puerto de la Fuenfría.”

  “So?”

  “So, nothing. I didn’t have the cash to bribe the scribe with, and once they’d strung me and plucked me like a guitar, they sent me here, where I’m busy preparing my back for the rigors of life on the galleys.”

  “When did you arrive?”

  “Six days ago. After a jolly little jaunt of seventy-five leagues on foot, all of us shackled together, surrounded by guards, and in the freezing cold. It was pissing with rain when we reached Adamuz, where we tried to make a run for it, but the catchpoles caught up with us and brought us here. They’re taking us down to El Puerto de Santa María on Monday.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Oh, don’t be sorry, Captain. I don’t expect much from life, and, besides, it’s all part of the job really. And it could have been worse. Some of my comrades were sent to the mercury mines in Almadén, and that’s the real finibusterre, that is. Not many men make it out of there alive, I can tell you.”

  “Is there some way I can help?”

  Cagafuego lowered his voice. “If you have a bit of spare cash on you, I’d be very grateful. Me and my friends here haven’t got a bean.”

  Alatriste took out his purse and placed four silver escudos in Cagafuego’s great paw. “How’s Blasa Pizorra?”

  “Dead, poor woman.” Cagafuego discreetly pocketed the coins, eyeing his companions warily. “She was taken into the Hospital de Atocha. Her hair had fallen out and she had swellings all over her body. It was awful to see her like that, poor thing!”

  “Did she leave you anything?”

  “Only a sense of relief really. Given her profession, she had the pox, of course, but by some miracle, I didn’t get it.”

  “My condolences anyway.”

  “Thank you.”

  Alatriste gave a half-smile. “You never know,” he said, “perhaps you’ll get lucky. The Turks might capture the g
alley, and you might decide to convert and end up in Constantinople in charge of a harem.”

  “Don’t say such things,” said Cagafuego, apparently genuinely offended. “Let’s get this straight, neither the king nor Jesus Christ is to blame for me being where I am now.”

  “You’re quite right, Cagafuego. I wish you luck.”

  “Same to you, Captain Alatriste.”

  And he stayed there, leaning against the bars, watching as we walked down the corridor. As I mentioned before, we could hear singing and the strumming of a guitar coming from the infirmary, and the prisoners in nearby cells were now providing an accompaniment, banging knives on bars, clapping, and playing improvised flutes. The room set aside for the meal contained a couple of benches and a small altar with a crucifix and a candle, and in the center was a table adorned with tallow candles and surrounded by several stools, which were occupied at that moment, as were the benches, by a select sample of the local ruffianry. They had begun arriving at nightfall and continued to do so, grave-faced and solemn, wearing capes thrown back over their shoulders, old buff coats, tow-stuffed doublets—which had been holed more often than La Méndez herself—hats with the brims turned up at the front, huge curled mustaches, scars, patches, verdigris hearts bearing the names of their ladyloves and other such things tattooed on hands and arms, Turkish beards, medallions of Virgins and saints, rosaries of black beads worn around the neck, and all manner of swords and daggers, as well as yellow-handled slaughterer’s knives tucked in the leg of gaiters and boots. This dangerous rabble of rogues were making short work of the pitchers of wine arranged on the table along with queen olives, capers, Flemish cheese, and slices of fried bacon; they addressed each other as “sir,” “comrade,” “friend,” and spoke with the accents of the criminal classes, mixing up their h’s and their j ’s and their g’s and saying, for example, gerida instead of herida, jumo instead of humo, harro instead of jarro. They toasted the souls of Escamilla and of Escarramán and drank to the soul of Nicasio Ganzúa, the last still very much there and safely ensconced in its owner’s body. They drank, as well, to the honor of Nicasio himself—“To your honor, comrade,” cried the ruffians—and every man there would very gravely raise his mug to his lips to make the toast. Not even at a wake in Vizcaya or at a Flemish wedding would you see such a thing. And as I watched them drinking and heard them, over and over, mentioning Ganzúa’s honor, I marveled that it should be so great.

  Go for hearts or diamonds

  If you seek a winning knave;

  Avoid black-hearted spades,

  For they will dig your grave.

  The songs continued, as did the drinking and the talk, and more comrades kept arriving. Sallow-skinned and menacing, with broad hands and face, and a huge mustache whose ferocious waxed ends reached almost to his eyes, Ganzúa was a strapping man in his late thirties and still as sharp as a razor. He had dressed for the occasion in his Sunday best: a purple, slightly darned doublet, slashed sleeves, green canvas breeches, shoes for promenading in, and a four-inch-wide belt with a silver buckle. It was a pleasure to see him looking so smart and so solemn, accompanied, encouraged, and cheered by his confreres, every one of them wearing a fine hat and looking for all the world like a Spanish grandee, gaily downing the wine, of which several pints had already been drunk and which showed no signs of running out because—not trusting the wine sold by the prison governor—they had brought a large supply of pitchers and bottles from a tavern in Calle Cordoneros. As for Ganzúa, he appeared not to be taking his early-morning appointment too much to heart, and he played his part with courage, decorum, and a proper sense of gravity.

  “Death, my friends, is of no importance,” he would declare now and then with great aplomb.

  Captain Alatriste, who understood this world well, went over and very courteously introduced himself to Ganzúa and company, passing on greetings from Juan Jaqueta, whose situation in the Patio de los Naranjos, he explained, meant that he could not have the pleasure of coming with him that night to bid farewell to his friend. Ganzúa responded equally courteously, inviting us to take a seat, which Alatriste did, having first greeted a few acquaintances who were all busily eating and drinking. Ginesillo el Lindo—a fair-haired, elegantly dressed ruffian, with an affable look and a dangerous smile, and long, silky, shoulder-length hair a la milanesa—greeted him warmly, delighted to see him well and in Seville. Ginesillo was, as everyone knew, effeminate—by which I mean that he had little taste for the act of Venus—but he was as brave as any man, and as deadly as a scorpion with a doctorate in the art of fencing. Others of his ilk proved less fortunate, and were arrested on the slightest pretext and treated by everyone, even by other prison inmates, with terrible cruelty, which only ended when they were burnt at the stake. In this frequently hypocritical and contemptible Spain, a man could, with impunity, lie with his own sister or daughters or even his grandmother, but, as with blasphemy and heresy, committing the abominable sin of sodomy meant only one thing: the pyre. By contrast, killing, stealing, corruption, and bribery were considered mere bagatelles.

  I took my place on a stool, sipped some wine, ate a few capers, and listened to the conversation and the solemn arguments that each man offered Nicasio Ganzúa by way of consolation or encouragement. Doctors kill more people than the executioner, one said. Another colleague pointed out that behind every bad lawsuit there’s a sly scribe. Another said that death, though a nuisance, was the inevitable fate of all men, even dukes and popes. Someone else cursed the whole race of lawyers, who had no equal, he affirmed, even amongst Turks and Lutherans. May God be our judge, said another, and leave justice to the fools. Yet another regretted that the sentence imposed on Ganzúa would deprive the world of such an illustrious member of the criminal classes.

  “My only regret,” said another prisoner who was also at the wake, “is that my own sentence hasn’t been signed yet, although I’m expecting it any moment. It’s a damned shame it didn’t arrive today, really, because I would gladly have joined you on the scaffold tomorrow.”

  Everyone thought this the sentiment of a true comrade and, praising its aptness, pointed out to Ganzúa how much his friends admired him and how honored they were to be able to keep him company at this time, just as they would be the following morning in Plaza de San Francisco—those of them, that is, who could walk the streets without fear of constables. They would all do the same for one another one day, and whatever a fellow ruffian might suffer, he would always have his friends.

  “You have to face death with courage, just as you’ve always faced life,” said a man with a much-scarred face and a fringe as greasy as the collar of his shirt. He was El Bravo de los Galeones—a sharp-witted rogue from Chipiona.

  “On my grandmother’s grave, that’s true,” replied Ganzúa serenely. “No one did me a wrong they didn’t pay for later, and if ever a man did, then come the Resurrection, when I step out into the new world, I’ll really let him have it.”

  All nodded sagely: this was how real men talked, and they all knew that at his execution the following day, he would neither blanch nor turn religious; he was, after all, a brave man and a scion of Seville, and everyone knew that La Heria did not breed cowards, and that others before him had drunk from that same cup and never quailed. A man with a Portuguese accent offered the consoling thought that at least the sentence had been imposed by the king’s justice, and therefore almost by the king himself, and so it was not just anyone who was taking Ganzúa’s life. It would be a mark of dishonor for such a famous rogue to be dispatched by a mere nobody. This last remark was roundly applauded by the other men there, and Ganzúa himself smoothed his mustaches, pleased with such a measured assessment of the situation. The idea had come from a ruffian in a knee-length buff coat; he had little fat on him and little hair, and what hair he had grew gray and curly and abundant around the noble, bronzed dome of his head. It was said that he’d been a theologian at the University of Coimbra until some misfortune had set him on the path of cr
ime. Everyone considered him to be a man of the law and of letters, as well as a swordsman; he was known as Saramago el Portugués; he had a stately air about him, and was said to kill only out of necessity, hoarding all his money like a Jew in order to print, at his own expense, an endless epic poem on which he’d been working for the last twenty years, and in which he described how the Iberian Peninsula broke away from Europe and drifted off like a raft on the ocean, crewed entirely by the blind. Or something like that.

  “It’s my Maripizca I feel sorry for,” said Ganzúa, between mugs of wine.

  Maripizca la Aliviosa was Ganzúa’s doxy, and he believed that his execution would leave her all alone in the world. She had come to see him that very evening, crying and weeping: ah, light of my eyes and love of my life, et cetera, fainting away every five steps or so into the arms of twenty or so of the condemned man’s comrades. During the tender conversation that followed, Ganzúa had apparently commended his soul to her by asking her to pay for a few masses to be said—because a ruffian would never confess, not even on his way to the scaffold, on the grounds that it was dishonorable to go bleating to God about something he had refused to reveal under torture—and to come to some agreement with the executioner, by offering him either money or her own body, so that, the next day, everything would be done in an honorable and dignified fashion, ensuring that he did not cut a foolish figure when the rope was tightened around his neck in Plaza de San Francisco, in full view of all his acquaintances. La Aliviosa finally bade a graceful farewell, praising her man’s courage and expressing the hope that she would see him again in the next world, “looking just as healthy and handsome and brave.” La Aliviosa, said Ganzúa to his guests, was a good, hardworking woman, very clean about her person and a good earner too, and who only needed the occasional beating to keep her in order. However, there was scarcely any need to praise her further, because she was well known to all the men present, and indeed to all of Seville and half of Spain. And as for the razor scar on her face, well, it hardly spoiled her appearance at all, and besides, he had done it while blind drunk on good Sanlúcar oloroso. All couples had their little misunderstandings, didn’t they? Indeed, a timely cut to the face was a healthy sign of affection, the proof of this being that whenever he felt obliged to give her a good hiding, his eyes always filled with tears. La Aliviosa had shown herself to be a dutiful, faithful companion by taking care of him in prison with money earned by works that would be discounted from her sins, if, indeed, it was a sin to make sure that the man of her heart lacked for nothing. And that was all there was to be said on the matter. At this point, he grew a little emotional, although in a very manly way; he sniffed and took another sip of wine, and various voices chimed in to reassure him. Don’t worry, she’ll come to no harm, my word on it, said one. Mine too, said another. That’s what friends are for, put in a third. Comforted to know that he was leaving her in such good hands, Ganzúa continued drinking while Ginesillo el Lindo warbled a seguidilla or two in tribute to Maripizca.