He fell silent again, studying Alatriste’s impassive face.
“Did you hear what I said?”
My master held his gaze, but did not respond, as if the count had spoken of something that he felt neither a need nor a desire to remember, something in which he preferred not to be implicated. After a moment, the count looked away, slowly shaking his head and smiling to himself, in an amused, understanding manner. Then his eye fell on me.
“They say the boy acquitted himself well,” he said, changing the subject. “And that he even brought away with him a nice little souvenir.”
“Yes, he acquitted himself very well indeed,” agreed Alatriste, making me blush with pride.
“Regarding this afternoon, you know the protocol,” Guadalmedina said, indicating the large doors that opened out onto the garden. “Their Majesties will enter through there, the yokels will bow, and then the king and queen will leave through that door over there. It’ll be over in a flash. As for you, Alatriste, all you have to do is doff your hat and, for once in your wretched life, bow that stubborn soldier’s head of yours. The king—who will, as usual, be gazing somewhere at the horizon—will merely glance at you for a moment. Olivares will do the same. You nod, and that’s that.”
“What an honor,” said Quevedo sarcastically. And then, so softly that we had to lean closer to hear, he recited these lines:
“See them all decked out in purple,
Hands beringed with glittering gems?
Inside, they’re naught but putrefaction,
Made of mud and earth and worms.”
Guadalmedina—very much the courtier that afternoon—started back. He looked around, gesturing to Quevedo to restrain himself.
“Really, don Francisco, a little decorum, please. This is hardly the time or the place. Besides, there are people who would cut off their right hand for one glance from the king.” He turned to the captain and, adopting a persuasive tone, said, “Anyway, it’s no bad thing that Olivares should remember you and invite you here. You have a number of enemies in Madrid, and it’s quite a coup to be able to count the king’s favorite among your friends. It’s high time you shook off the poverty that’s been dogging you like a shadow. And as you yourself once said to don Gaspar—and in my presence too—one never knows.”
“It’s true,” replied Alatriste. “One never knows.”
There was a roll of drums on the far side of the courtyard, followed by a short blast on a trumpet, whereat all conversation stopped and fans ceased fluttering; a few hats were rapidly doffed, and everyone turned expectantly in the direction of the fountains, the neat hedges, and the pleasant rose gardens. On the far side of the courtyard, the king and queen and their cortège had just emerged from a room full of lavish hangings and tapestries.
“I must go and join them,” said Guadalmedina. “I’ll see you later, Alatriste, and if you can manage it, try to smile a little when the count-duke looks at you. No, on second thought, don’t. A smile from you usually heralds an attack!”
He left, and we stayed where we were, on the very edge of the white path bisecting the garden, while people to either side of us moved away, eyes fixed on the slowly advancing procession. Ahead came two officers and four archers from the royal guard, and behind them the cream of the royal entourage, gentlemen and ladies-in-waiting—the former dressed in fine costumes adorned with diamonds and gold chains, and wearing court swords with gilded hilts; the latter wearing shawls, plumed hats, jewels, lace, and lavish dresses.
“There she is,” whispered Quevedo.
There was no need for him to say any more, because I, struck dumb and rooted to the spot, had already seen her. Amongst the queen’s maids of honor was Angélica de Alquézar, her golden ringlets brushing the delicate, near-transparent shawl drawn tight about her shoulders. She was as lovely as ever, with, at her waist, the interesting addition of a small jewel-encrusted silver pistol, which looked as if it could fire real bullets, and which she wore like an ornament on the scarlet watered satin of her skirt. A Neapolitan fan hung from her wrist, but her head was unadorned, apart from a delicate mother-of-pearl comb.
Then she saw me. Her blue eyes, which had, until then, been staring blankly ahead, suddenly focused on me as if she had sensed my presence or as if, by dint of some strange witchcraft, she had been expecting to find me on that precise spot. She gave me a lingering look, without glancing away or appearing in the least discomfited. And just as she was about to walk past me, which would mean, of course, that she could only maintain eye contact by turning her head, she smiled. And what a glorious smile it was, as bright as the sun gilding the battlements of the Reales Alcázares. Then she was gone, moving off along the path, and I was left standing there like a gaping fool, having entirely surrendered my three faculties—memory, understanding, and will—to her love, and thinking that I would gladly have returned again and again to the Alameda de Hércules or to the Niklaasbergen, ready to offer up my life, if only she would smile at me like that one more time. And so fast were my heart and pulse beating that I felt a sudden pang, a sudden warm dampness under the bandage, where my wound had just reopened.
“Ah, my boy,” murmured don Francisco de Quevedo, placing an affectionate hand on my shoulder. “So it is and so it will always be: you will die a thousand times and yet your griefs will never kill you.”
I sighed, incapable of saying a word. And I heard the poet softly reciting:
“The beautiful creature from behind her bars
Promises that she’s mine, only mine.”
The king and queen, in their slow, stiff progress, had, by then, almost drawn level with us. The young, blond Philip, strongly built and very erect, his gaze fixed, as ever, on some point in the middle distance, was dressed in blue velvet trimmed with black and silver, and around his neck, on a black ribbon and gold chain, he wore the badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The queen, doña Isabel de Borbón, was wearing a silver-gray dress with orange taffeta cuffs, and a bejeweled and feathered hat that set off her sweet, youthful face. Unlike her husband, she smiled charmingly at everyone, and it was a delight to see that beautiful French-born Spanish queen, the daughter, sister, and wife of kings, whose cheerful nature brightened the sober Spanish court for two decades and aroused certain sighs and passions about which I will perhaps tell you on another occasion. She also refused outright to live in El Escorial—that dark, somber, austere palace built by her husband’s grandfather—although in one of life’s little ironies, from which no one is exempt, the poor thing was finally obliged to take up permanent residence there, when she was buried alongside the other queens of Spain.
But on that festive afternoon in Seville, such things were all a long way off. The king and queen looked so young and elegant, and as they passed, all present removed their hats and bowed before Their Royal Majesties. Accompanying them was the imposing, burly figure of the Conde-Duque de Olivares, the very image of power in his black clothes, with that mighty back of his which, like Atlas, bore the awful weight of the vast monarchy of Old and New Spain, an impossible duty that, years later, don Francisco de Quevedo summed up in three lines:
How much easier it is, O Spain,
For everyone to steal from you alone
what you alone stole from everyone.
Don Gaspar de Guzmán, Conde-Duque de Olivares and minister to our king, wore a broad Walloon collar and, embroidered on his breast, the cross of Calatrava; the fierce points of his vast mustache rose up almost as far as his wary, penetrating eyes, which shifted constantly, restlessly, back and forth—identifying, recording, recognizing. The king and queen stopped only rarely and always at the count-duke’s suggestion; and when this happened, the king or the queen, or both at once, would gaze upon some fortunate person who for whatever reason—because of services performed or through influential contacts—was deemed deserving of that honor. In such cases, the women curtsied low to the floor, and the men bowed from the waist, their hats having already been doffed, of course; and then, after the gift o
f this moment of contemplation and silence, the king and queen would continue their solemn march. Behind them came certain select Spanish nobles and grandees, amongst them the Conde de Guadalmedina; as he approached us, Alatriste and Quevedo, along with everyone else, removed their hats, and the count dropped a few words into the ear of the count-duke, who bestowed on our group one of his fierce looks, as merciless as an indictment. The count-duke, in turn, whispered into the ear of the king, who stopped walking, brought his gaze down from the heights, and fixed it on us. While the count-duke was still murmuring into his ear, the king, his prognathous bottom lip protruding, rested his faded blue eyes on Captain Alatriste.
“They’re talking about you,” muttered Quevedo.
I glanced at the captain. He remained very upright, his hat in one hand and his other hand resting on the hilt of his sword, with his stern, mustachioed profile and serene, soldierly head looking straight at the king, at the monarch whose name he had shouted out on battlefields and for whose gold he had risked life and limb only three nights before. I saw that the captain seemed unimpressed and unabashed. All his awkwardness over the formal nature of the event had vanished, and there remained only his frank, dignified gaze, which held that of the king with the equanimity of one who owes nothing and expects nothing. I remembered the moment when the old Cartagena regiment mutinied at Breda and I was tempted to join the rebels, and how, when the ensigns were leaving the ranks in order not to be tainted by the revolt, Alatriste had grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and forced me to leave with them, uttering the words “Your king is your king.”
And it was there, in the courtyard of the Reales Alcázares in Seville, that I finally began to understand the meaning of that singular dogma, which I had failed to understand at the time: the loyalty professed by Captain Alatriste was not to the fair-haired young man standing before him, not to His Catholic Majesty, not to the one true religion, or to the idea that either one of them represented on Earth, but to that one personal rule, chosen for want of anything better, and which was all that remained from the shipwreck of more generalized, more enthusiastic ideas that had dissolved with the loss of innocence and youth. Regardless of what the rule was—right or wrong, logical or illogical, just or unjust, justifiable or not—it was the rule that mattered to men like Diego Alatriste as a way of imposing some kind of order, or structure, on the apparent chaos of life. And thus, paradoxically, my master respectfully doffed his hat before his king not out of resignation or discipline but out of despair. After all, since there were no old gods in whom one could trust, no great words that could be bandied about during combat, it was a salve to everyone’s honor—or, at least, better than nothing at all—to have a king for whom one could fight and before whom one could doff one’s hat, even if one did not believe in him. And so Captain Alatriste held firmly to that principle, just as, had he given his loyalty to someone else, he might have pushed his way through that very same throng and knifed the king to death, without a thought for the consequences.
At that point, something unusual happened to interrupt my thoughts. The Conde-Duque de Olivares concluded his short report, and the monarch’s usually impassive eyes now took on an expression of curiosity and remained fixed on the captain. Then our fourth Philip gave the very slightest of approving nods and, slowly raising his hand to his august breast, removed the gold chain he was wearing and handed it to the count-duke. The latter, smiling thoughtfully, weighed it in his hand for a moment and then, to the general amazement of all those present, came toward us.
“His Majesty would like you to accept this chain,” he said.
He said this in the stern, arrogant tone so typical of him, piercing the captain with the two hard, black points of his eyes, a smile still visible beneath his fierce mustache.
“Gold from the Indies,” he added with evident irony.
Alatriste turned pale. He stood stock-still and stared at the count-duke uncomprehendingly. Olivares was still proffering him the chain in his outstretched palm.
“Well, don’t keep me waiting all day,” Olivares snapped.
The captain seemed finally to come to. And once he had recovered his composure, he at last took the chain, and, stammering out a few words of gratitude, looked again at the king. The latter continued to observe the captain with some curiosity, and meanwhile Olivares returned to his monarch’s side; Guadalmedina stood, beaming, amongst the other astonished courtiers; and the cortège prepared to move on. Then Captain Alatriste bowed his head respectfully; the king again, almost imperceptibly, nodded, and the procession set off.
Proud of my master, I looked defiantly around me at all those inquisitive faces, staring in astonishment at the captain, wondering who the devil this fortunate man was, to whom the count-duke himself had presented a gift from the king. Don Francisco de Quevedo was chuckling delightedly to himself and clicking his fingers, muttering about a need to wet both his whistle and his words at Becerra’s inn, where he had to set down some lines that had just occurred to him:
“If what I have I do not fear to lose,
Nor yet desire to have what I do not,
I’m safe from Fortune’s wheel whate’er I choose,
Let plaintiff or defendant be my lot.”
He recited these lines to us for our pleasure, as gleefully as he always did when he found a good rhyme, a good fight, or a good mug of wine.
“So to the last, dear Alatriste, keep
Alone, alone, until the final sleep.”
As for the captain, he remained standing amongst the other guests, not budging, his hat still grasped in his hand, watching the royal cortège process through the Alcázar gardens. And to my surprise, I saw a cloud pass over his face, as if what had just happened had, suddenly and symbolically, bound him far more tightly than he wished to be bound. The less a man owes, the freer he is, and according to the worldview of my master—capable of killing for a doubloon or a word—there were things never written or spoken that he considered to be as binding as a friendship, a discipline, or an oath. And while, beside me, don Francisco de Quevedo continued improvising lines from his new sonnet, I knew, or sensed, that the king’s gift of a gold chain weighed on Captain Alatriste as heavily as if it were made of iron.
EXTRACTS FROM
SOME FINE POETRY
WRITTEN BY VARIOUS WITS OF
THIS CITY OF SEVILLE
Printed in the seventeenth century, without a printer’s mark,
and preserved in the “Conde de Guadalmedina”
section of the Archive and Library of
the Duques de Nuevo Extremo (Seville).
ATTRIBUTED TO DON FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO
The last evening and end of the ruffian Nicasio Ganzúa,
who died in Seville from a very bad sore throat
brought on by the rope.
FIRST BALLAD
In old Seville town, in its dark, lofty prison
The cream of the thieves are now gathered together.
They have come to this place for a grand celebration,
A banquet in aid of Nicasio Ganzúa,
For, at dawn, he’ll be issued his very last passport.
And it’s thus only right, in His Majesty’s prison
For a solemn event to be given due weight;
But because it’s the king who is giving the orders
No time must be lost—tempus fugit, my friends.
Here they come, brothers all of the criminal class,
Yes, those who are paid by the sum of their sword thrusts
And all of them dressed in the deepest of mourning,
Though armed to the teeth with glistening steel
(the jailer meanwhile has his itchy palm greased
with the silvery glitter of pieces of eight).
How they praise to the skies the condemnèd man,
Though their praises are not of a sacred kind,
See them sit round a table—the flower of ruffians—
For no honest rogue would ever dar
e miss
This wake for a man, for a hero illustrious.
How peacock-proud are these would-be nobles
(To be sure, in this gathering, no women are found)
With their hats pulled down low o’er their faces, like grandees,
As they drink down whole mugs of the reddest of wines
And toast, with huzzahs, the health of Saint Glug,
For to men of the world he’s their patron saint.
All drink to the fame of the bravest of comrades
Who, to judge by the barrel of wine they imbibe,
Must indeed be a man most worthy of honor.
At the fore, is the handsome young Ginés el Lindo
Who, they say, is a practicing doctor of fencing,
Even though he’s a queer and strums the guitar.
Nearby, Saramago, that fine Portuguese,
Who’s always prepared to spout some philosophy;
For sure, he’s a doctor in utriusque
And wields with a flourish both a pen and a sword.
Another fine rogue can be seen paying court—
from the town of Chipiona and sharp as a tack—
by name, El Bravo de los Galeones.
Then, Guzmán Ramírez, a man of few words,
Grabs a new deck of cards and is ready to play
With Rojo Carmona, his companion at table,
Who’s known as a notable trickster to boot.
Many others there are in the thievery line,
Who love to distraction the pockets of others;
A newcomer there is, Diego Alatriste,
Who has come like a brother to be with Ganzúa.
And sitting beside him there’s Íñigo Balboa,
A young man who showed at the great Siege of Breda
His courage in fighting—no coward was he.
While they’re singing their songs and playing at cards,
While they carry on drinking the wine red as blood,