Captain Alatriste

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  the swaggerer with the cape over his shoulder once again hissed at Diego Alatriste, and this time he was joined by two of the other four troublemakers, who had inched closer during the entr'acte. The captain himself had played the same game more than once, so to him what they were doing was as clear as water, especially considering that the two remaining swashbucklers were now elbowing through the mosqueteros.

  The captain looked around to assess the situation. It was significant that neither the magistrate nor the bailiffs who usually imposed order during performances were anywhere to be seen. As for other help, Licenciado Calzas was not a man-of-arms, and the fifty-year-old Juan Vicuna could not do much with just one hand. Don Francisco de Quevedo was two rows ahead of us, focused on the stage and unaware of what was brewing behind him. And the worst of it was that some of the public, influenced by the hissing of the provocateurs, began to scowl at Alatriste as if he truly were disturbing the performance. What was about to happen was as obvious as two and two make four. Or in that specific case, three and two make five. And five to one was too much, even for the captain.

  Alatriste tried to ease toward the nearest door. If forced to fight, he could do so more freely outside than inside the theater, where in the time it takes to breathe "Jesus!" he was going to be stitched like a quilt by daggers. There were two churches nearby, where he could find sanctuary if the law intervened in time. But since the unholy five were already closing in, the business was taking an ugly turn.

  That was the situation as the second act ended.

  Applause resounded, and the insults of the miscreants grew louder. Now the rabble began to chime in. Words were exchanged, and the tone heated up.

  Finally, between oaths and "By my lifes," someone uttered the word "blackguard." Then Diego Alatriste sighed deeply, down to his toes. That sealed it. With resignation, he gripped his sword and withdrew steel from scabbard.

  At least, he thought fleetingly as he bared his blade, a couple of those whoresons would accompany him to Hell. Without even setting himself firmly, he cut a swath to the right to drive back the nearest ruffian, and reaching back with his left hand, he pulled the vizcaina from where it was sheathed over his kidneys. People around him scrambled to get out of the way, women in the cazuela screamed, and the occupants of the boxes leaned over the railing to see better. It was not unusual at that time, as I have said, for the entertainment to shift from the stage to the yard, so everyone settled in to enjoy a bonus performance; within moments, a circle had formed around the contenders.

  The captain, sure that he could not long defend himself against five armed and skillful men, decided not to concern himself with the fine points of fencing; the best way to maintain his health was to impair that of his enemies. He took one stab at the man with the folded cape, and without stopping to see the result—which was not significant— he stooped low, hoping with his vizcaina to cut the hamstring of another opponent. If you do the arithmetic, five swords and five daggers add up to ten weapons slicing through the air, so the stabs and thrusts were raining down like hail. One came so close that it cut a sleeve of the captain's doublet, and another would have gone through his body had it not become tangled in his cape. Attacking right and left with coups and moulinets, Alatriste forced two of his adversaries to retreat, parried one with his sword and another with his knife, then felt the cold, sharp edge of a blade being drawn across his head. Blood streamed down between his eyebrows.

  You are fucked, Diego, he told himself with a last shred of lucidity. This is it. And it was true, he felt exhausted. His arms were as heavy as lead, and he was blinded by blood. He raised his left hand, the one with the dagger, to swipe the blood from his eyes, and saw a sword pointed toward his throat. And in that same instant he heard Don Francisco de Quevedo yelling, "Alatriste! He's mine! He's mine!" in a voice like thunder. He had leaped from the benches to the barrier, and interposed his sword, blocking the deadly thrust.

  "Five to two is a little better!" the poet exclaimed, sword raised, with a happy nod to the captain. "We have no choice but to fight!"

  And in fact, he fought like the demon he was, Toledo sword tight in his grip, and completely unimpeded by his lameness. Undoubtedly verses and figures for the decima he would compose if he came out of this alive were racing through his mind. His eyeglasses had fallen to his chest and were dangling from their ribbon near the red cross of Santiago; he was sweating hard, ferociously venting the bile that he usually reserved for his verses but that on occasions like this he expressed with the point of his sword. His dramatic and unexpected charge subdued the attackers, and he even succeeded in wounding one of them with a good thrust that went through the band of the man's baldric and into the shoulder. Recovering from their shock, the attackers regained their focus and closed in again, and the battle continued in a whirlwind of steel. Even the actors came out on the stage to watch.

  What happened next is history. Witnesses report that, in the box where the supposedly incognito king, Wales, Buckingham, and their train of courtiers were sitting, everyone was watching the altercation below with great interest, though with conflicting emotions. Our monarch, as was natural, was annoyed by the shameful affront to public order in his august presence, even though that presence was not official. But the young, daring, and chivalrous part of his being was not, in a deeper sense, greatly disturbed that his foreign guests were witnessing a spontaneous demonstration of courage on the part of his subjects, men whom, after all, they usually met on the field of battle.

  One thing could not be disputed, and that was that the man fighting against five was doing so with unbelievable desperation and courage, and that after only a few slashes and thrusts he had drawn the sympathy of the audience and shouts of anguish among the ladies when they saw him so sorely pressed.

  Our lord and king was torn, it was later reported, between protocol and enjoyment, and therefore was slow to order the head of his civilian-clad escort to intervene and put an end to the disturbance. And just as finally he opened his mouth to give a royal, uncontestable order, to everyone's surprise and admiration, Don Francisco de Quevedo, who was very well known at court, jumped resolutely into the fray.

  But the greatest surprise was still to come. The poet had shouted the name Alatriste as he entered the tournament, and our lord and king, aghast at every new development, noticed that when Buckingham and Charles of England heard that name, they turned to look at each other with a start of recognition.

  "Ala-tru-iste!" exclaimed the Prince of Wales, with his childish British pronunciation. And after leaning over the railing an instant, he quickly assessed the situation in the yard below, again turned to Buckingham, and then the king. In the days he had spent in Madrid he had had time to learn a few words and phrases of Spanish, and using them, he apologized and excused himself to the king.

  "Diess-culpad, Si-yure.... I am indebted to that man. He saved my life."

  Even as he spoke, as phlegmatic and serene as if he were at Saint James's Palace, he removed his hat, adjusted his gloves, and asking for his sword looked at Buckingham with perfect sangfroid.

  "Steenie," he said.

  Then, without hesitation, steel in hand, he raced down the stairs, followed by Buckingham, who was pulling out his sword. An astonished Philip did not know whether to stop them or go to the railing to watch, so that by the time he recovered the composure he had been so close to losing, the two Englishmen were already in the yard of the corral de comedias, crossing swords with the five men who had Francisco de Quevedo and Diego Alatriste boxed in.

  It was a combat of which epics are made. Boxes, galleries, cazuela, benches, and yard—all stupefied to see Charles and Buckingham appear with weapons in hand—exploded with a roar of applause and shouts of approval. With that, our lord and king reacted, rose to his feet, turned to his courtiers, and ordered them to end the madness. As he gave the order, his glove dropped to the floor. And that, in someone who ruled forty-four years without ever raising an eyebrow or changing expressio
n in public, betrayed how that afternoon in El Principe corral, the monarch of both the new world and the old came within an ace of revealing

  emotion.

  XI THE SEAL AND THE LETTER

  Through a window that opened onto one of the large courtyards of the Alcazar Real, the crisp shouts of the Spanish, Burgundian, and German troops reached Diego Alatriste's ears as the guard was changed at the palace gates. There was a single carpet on the wood floor of the room, and on it an enormous dark table covered with papers, files, and books, as somber as the man seated behind it. This man was methodically reading letters and dispatches, one after another, and from time to time he wrote something in a margin with a quill he dipped into a Talavera pottery inkwell. He worked without stopping, as if ideas were flowing across the paper as smoothly as his reading, or the ink. This went on for a long while.

  The man did not look up even when the head constable, Martin Saldana, accompanied by the sergeant and two soldiers of the royal guard who had brought Diego Alatriste through secret corridors, led him in and then withdrew. The man at the table continued dispatching letters, unperturbed, as if he were alone, so the captain had all the time in the world to study him. He was corpulent, with a large head and a ruddy face; coarse black hair fell over his ears, and his chin and cheeks were covered by a thick dark beard and enormous mustache. He was clad in dark blue silk trimmed with black braid, and his shoes and hose were black as well. On his chest blazed the red cross of Calatrava, which along with the white ruff and a handsome gold chain was the only contrast to his somber attire.

  Although Gaspar de Guzman, third Conde de Olivares, would not be made a duke until two years later, he was enjoying his second year of favor at court. At age thirty-five, he was a grandee of Spain, and his power was enormous. The young monarch, much fonder of fiestas and hunting than of affairs of government, was a blind instrument in Guzman's hands, and any who might have overshadowed him were either crushed or dead. His former protectors, the Duque de Uceda and Fray Luis de Aliaga, favorites of the previous king, found themselves in exile; the Duque de Osuna was in disgrace, with his properties confiscated; the Duque de Lerma had escaped the gibbet thanks to his cardinal's robes—He whose cape is cardinal red will not hang by the neck until he's dead, was the old saying—and

  Rodrigo Calderon, another of the principals in the former regime, had been executed in the public plaza. Now no one stood in the way of that intelligent, cultured, patriotic, and ambitious man's design to hold in his hands the strings of the empire that was still the most powerful on earth.

  It is easy enough to imagine the emotions Diego Alatriste was experiencing as he stood before this all-powerful favorite of the king in that huge chamber in which, except for the table and carpet, the only decoration, mounted above a large unlighted fireplace, was a portrait of Philip the Second, grandfather of the present monarch. The captain's apprehension grew after he recognized in the man at the table—without the least doubt or pause to consider—the taller and stronger of the two masked men from that first night at the Santa Barbara gate. The same man whom the one with the round head had called Excellency before his superior left, after requesting that not too much blood be shed in the affair of the two Englishmen.

  If only, the captain thought, the execution that lay in store for him would not be by garrote. It was not that dangling at the end of a rope was his cup of tea, either, but at least it was better than being removed with an ignominious tourniquet squeezing tighter and tighter around his neck, his face contorted as he heard the executioner say, "Forgive me, Your Mercy, I am only following orders."

  May Christ unleash a thunderbolt to incinerate all the spineless lackeys who were "just following orders," and take with them the bastards who gave the orders as well. Not to mention the obligatory handcuffs, brazier, judge, reporter, scribe, and executioner needed to obtain a proper confession before speeding your disjointed body toward Hell. Diego Alatriste did not sing well with a rope around his neck, so his last serenade would be long and painful. Given a choice, he would have preferred to end his days with steel, fighting. That was, after all, the decent way for a soldier to make his exit: Viva Espana! and all that, and little angels singing his way in Heaven, or wherever he was to go.

  "But not many blessings are being handed out these days," a worried Martin Saldana had whispered to him when he came to wake him at the prison that early morning and take him to the Alcazar.

  "By my faith, it looks bad this time, Diego."

  "I have had it worse."

  "No. Not ever. The person who wants to see you allows no man to save himself by his sword."

  Worse, Alatriste had nothing to fight with. Even the slaughterer's knife in his boot had been taken from him when he was imprisoned after the row in the corral de comedias, when the intervention of the Englishmen had at least prevented him from being killed on the spot.

  "En pas ahora este-umos "—we're even now—Charles of England had said when the guard arrived to separate the contenders, or protect him, which in reality was one and the same. And after sheathing his sword, he, along with Buckingham, had turned away, acting as if he were completely unaware of the applause of an admiring public. Don Francisco de Quevedo was allowed to go, by the personal order of the king, who apparently had been pleased with his latest sonnet. As for the five swordsmen, two escaped in the confusion, one had been carried off gravely wounded, and the other two were arrested at the same time as Alatriste and put in the cell next to his. As the captain left that morning with Saldana, he had passed by that same cell. Empty.

  The Conde de Olivares continued to focus on his correspondence, and the captain looked toward the window, with somber hope. That out might save him from the executioner and shorten the process, although a thirty-foot fall from the window to the courtyard might not be enough; he might merely expose himself to the torment of ending up injured but alive, and hoisted onto the mule to hang, broken legs and all, which was not a pretty picture. And there was yet another problem: What if there was Someone up there after all? He would hold Alatriste's jumping to his death against him all through an afterlife no less unpleasant for being hypothetical.

  So if the bugles were blowing Retreat! it was better to go having had the sacraments, and dispatched by another hand. Just in case. When all was said and done, he consoled himself, however painful, and however long it takes to die, in the end you are just as dead. And he who dies finds rest.

  He was mulling over these happy thoughts when he became aware that the court favorite had finished his task and had turned his attention to him. Those fiery black eyes seemed to be taking in every detail. Alatriste, whose doublet and hose showed the signs of the night spent in a cell, regretted that he did not present a better appearance. A clean bandage over the slash on his forehead would have helped, and water to wash away the dried blood on his face.

  "Have you seen me before, do you think?"

  Olivares's question caught the captain unawares. A sixth sense, something like the sound a steel blade makes when drawn over a whetstone, warned him to display exquisite caution.

  "No. Never."

  "Never?"

  "I have said so, Excellency." "Not even during some public function?" "Well . . ." the captain stroked his mustache, as if trying hard to remember. "Perhaps ... in the Plaza Mayor, or at the Hieronymite convent . . . someplace like that." He nodded with what passed as thoughtful honesty. "That is possible, yes."

  Olivares held his eyes, impassive. "No other time?"

  "No, no other time."

  For a very brief instant the captain believed he glimpsed a smirk in the favorite's thick growth of beard. But he was never sure. Olivares had picked up one of the files on his table and was leafing through the pages distractedly.

  "You served in Flanders and Naples, I see here. And against the Turks in the Levant, and on the Barbary coast. A long life as a soldier."

  "Since I was thirteen, Excellency."

  "Your title of captain is, I imagine, u
nearned?"

  "Not officially. I never rose above the rank of sergeant, and I was relieved of that after a . . . scuffle."

  "Yes, that is what it says here." The minister kept riffling through the documents. "You quarreled with a lieutenant—in fact, you ran him through. I am surprised that you were not hanged for that."

  "They were going to, Excellency. But that same day in Maastricht our troops mutinied. They had not been paid for five months. I myself did not join them, fortunately, so I had the opportunity to defend Field Marshal Miguel de Orduna from his own soldiers."