“He is, of course, your friend,” he said at last.
I nodded. After a moment, the count-duke nodded too.
“I understand,” he said.
He took a few steps about the gallery, stopping by a fresco that showed ranks of Spanish infantry, bristling with pikes, all grouped around the cross of San Andrés, marching toward the enemy. Sword in hand, smeared with gunpowder, hoarse with shouting out the name of Spain, I, too, had once belonged to those ranks, I thought bitterly, as had Captain Alatriste. Despite that, there we were. I noticed that the count-duke saw that I was looking at the scene and read my thoughts. The hint of a smile softened his features.
“I believe your master is innocent,” he said. “You have my word.”
I studied the imposing figure standing before me. I had no illusions. I had some experience of life, and I knew perfectly well that the kindness being shown to me by the most powerful man in Spain—indeed, in the world—was nothing but a highly intelligent ploy, as one would expect from a man capable of applying all his talents to the vast enterprise that was his one obsession: that of making his nation great, Catholic, and powerful, and defending it on land and sea against English, French, Dutch, Turks, against the world in general, for the Spanish empire was so vast and so feared that other countries could hope to achieve their own ambitions only at the expense of ours. As far as the count-duke was concerned, such an enterprise justified any means. I realized that he would use the same measured, patient tone were he issuing the order to have me quartered alive, and, if it came to that, he would do so with no more qualms than he would have about squashing a fly. I was merely the humblest of pawns on the complex chessboard where Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, was playing the very dangerous game of being the king’s favorite. Much later on, when life again placed me in his path, I was able to confirm that while our king’s all-powerful favorite never hesitated to sacrifice as many pawns as might prove necessary, he never let go of a piece, however modest, as long as he believed it could be useful to him.
Anyway, that afternoon in the Hall of Battles, I saw that every path was blocked, and so I plucked up my courage. After all, Guadalmedina would only have passed on what I had confided to him, nothing more. There was no harm in repeating that. As for the rest, including Angélica de Alquézar’s role in the conspiracy, that was another matter entirely. Guadalmedina could not talk about what he did not know, and I—for in my youthful chivalry I was ingenuous in the extreme—would not be the one to utter the name of my lady in the presence of the count-duke.
“Don Álvaro de la Marca,” I said, “has told Your Excellency the truth . . .”
At that point, I suddenly realized what the count-duke’s first words meant, and the realization troubled me greatly: Captain Alatriste’s journey to El Escorial was not a secret. He and Guadalmedina both knew about it, and I wondered who else might know, and wondered, too, if that information—for bad news travels faster than good—had also reached the ears of our enemies.
Soon after the pass, where the broom and the rocks gave way to oak woods and the path grew flatter and straighter, the horse began to hobble. Diego Alatriste dismounted and looked at the creature’s hooves, only to find that one of its left shoes had lost two nails and was coming loose. Cagafuego had not attached to the saddle a bag containing the requisite tools and so he had to fix the shoe as best he could, hammering the nails back in with a large stone. He had no idea how long this repair would last, but the next staging post was less than a league away. He remounted and, doing his best not to ride the horse too hard, and bending over every now and then to check the loose shoe, he continued on his way. He rode slowly for nearly an hour until—in the distance, to the right and with the still snowy peaks of the Guadarrama in the background—he could make out the granite tower and the roofs of the dozen or so houses that made up the little village of Galapagar. The road did not go into the village, but continued on, and when he reached the crossroads, Alatriste dismounted outside the coaching inn. He entrusted the horse to the farrier, took a quick look at the other horses resting in the stable and noticed in passing that two mounts were tethered outside, ready and saddled up. Then he went and sat down on the vine-covered porch of the village inn. Half a dozen mule drivers were playing cards near the wall; a man dressed in country fashion and with a sword at his belt was standing nearby, watching the game; and a cleric accompanied by a servant and two mules laden down with various bundles and trunks, was seated at another table, eating pigs’ trotters and brushing away the flies from his plate. The captain greeted the cleric, lightly touching the brim of his hat.
“The peace of God be with you,” said the cleric, his mouth full.
A serving wench brought Alatriste some wine, and he drank thirstily, stretched out his legs, and put his sword down on one side while he watched the farrier work. Then he estimated the height of the sun and made his calculations. It was a further two leagues, more or less, to El Escorial; this meant that, with the horse newly shod and making good speed, and as long as the intervening streams—the Charcón and the Ladrón—were not running too high and could be forded on the road itself, he would be at the palace by midafternoon. Pleased with this thought, he finished off the wine, put a coin down on the table, buckled on his sword, and went over to the farrier, who was finishing his task.
“Oh, forgive me, sir.”
Alatriste had not noticed the man coming out of the inn and almost bumped into him. He was a burly, bearded fellow, dressed country style, in gaiters and a huntsman’s hat, like the man watching the muleteers’ card game. Alatriste did not know him. He judged him to be a poacher or a gamekeeper, for he wore a short sword in a leather baldric and a hunting knife. The stranger accepted his apology with a curt nod of the head, but looked at him long and hard, and while the captain was walking over to the stable, he was aware that the man was still watching him. This, he thought, was odd, and it made him feel uneasy. As he was paying the farrier amid the buzz of horseflies, he glanced back out of the corner of his eye. The man was still watching him from the porch. Alatriste felt even more worried when, as he put his foot in the stirrup and hoisted himself up onto the horse, he saw the man exchange a look with the other fellow standing next to the muleteers. For some reason he aroused the man’s curiosity, and he could think of no reason that augured well.
Thus, cautiously looking over his shoulder to see if they were following him, he dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks and set off for El Escorial.
“There isn’t a stage in the world,” said don Francisco de Quevedo, “to compare with this.”
They were sitting in a niche in the wall beneath the granite colonnade of the Casa de la Compaña, watching the rehearsals for The Sword and the Dagger in the magnificent El Escorial gardens. These were at least a hundred feet wide and planted with lush clumps of flowers as tall as a man and with topiary hedges and mazes, all of which provided a setting for the dozen small fountains in which the waters sang and from which the birds drank. Protected from the north wind by the palace-monastery, whose walls were covered with trellises thick with jasmine and musk roses, the gardens formed a pleasant terrace along the south-facing façade of the building, a broad mirador that gave onto a large pond full of ducks and swans. Not far off, to the south and west, one could see the imposing mountains in tones of blue, gray, and green, and in the distance, to the east, the vast fields and royal forests that extended all the way to Madrid.
“In matters of the heart
When you very least suspect it,
From a bow flies a dart,
With your honor as its target.”
We heard the voice of María de Castro rehearsing the opening lines of the second act. Hers was, without a doubt, the sweetest voice in Spain, skillfully trained by her husband, who, in that respect, although not in others, always ruled with a firm hand. The sound of her voice was interrupted occasionally by hammering from the scene-shifters, and Cózar, who was using don Francisco’s script
as a prompt, would call for silence as majestically as an archbishop from Liège or a grand duke from Moscow, characters whose mannerisms he had honed on the stage. The play was to be performed there, in the open air. To this end, a stage had been set up as well as a large awning to protect the royal personages and the main guests from sun or rain. It was said that the count-duke was spending ten thousand escudos on fêting the king and queen and their guests with both play and party.
This is truly not a lie:
When in love, we who die
Live, and in living,
We as yet are dying.
These, by the way, were not lines of which don Francisco was particularly proud, but as he himself remarked to me in private, they were worth exactly what he was being paid for them. Besides, such plays on words, verbal sleights of hand, and paradoxes were very much to the taste of the public who attended the theater, from the king himself down to the most insignificant rogue, including the innkeeper Tabarca’s mosqueteros. And so, in the opinion of the poet—who was a great admirer of Lope de Vega, but who liked to put everyone in his proper place—if the Phoenix could sometimes allow himself such knowing jokes to round out an act or draw applause in a particular scene, he saw no reason why he should not do the same. What mattered, he said, was not that a man of his talent could produce such lines as easily as a Moor could make fritters, but that they amused the king, the queen, and their guests, and, more especially, the count-duke, who held the purse strings.
“The captain should be here soon,” Quevedo said suddenly.
I turned to look at him, grateful that he should still be thinking of my master. I found, however, that he was watching María de Castro as impassively as if he had not spoken a word, and indeed he said nothing more. For my part, I could not stop thinking about Captain Alatriste either, still less after my interview, given most reluctantly, with the king’s favorite. I was hoping that once the captain arrived and met with Guadalmedina everything would be resolved and our lives would return to normal. As for his relationship with La Castro—she was asking now for some cooling water to drink, and her husband solicitously had some brought for her—I had no doubt that he would cease to play the gallant to that very dangerous leading lady. As for the lovely actress herself, I was surprised how at ease she seemed to be in El Escorial. I understood then how an arrogant, self-confident woman, raised to such heights, might grow quite puffed up with vanity when she enjoyed the favor of a king or some other powerful man. Needless to say, the actress and the queen never met; the actresses only entered the palace garden for rehearsals and none were actually lodging on the palace grounds. It was also said that the king had already made the occasional night visit to La Castro, this time unmolested by anyone, still less by the husband, for it was well known that Cózar slept very soundly indeed and could snore like a saint even with his eyes wide open. All of this was common knowledge and would soon reach the ears of the queen. However, the daughter of Henri IV had been brought up as a princess and knew that such matters must be accepted as part of her role. Isabel de Borbón was always a model queen and lady, which is why the people loved and respected her until her death; and no one could imagine the tears of humiliation our unhappy queen would shed in the privacy of her rooms over her august husband’s licentious behavior, which would, in time, so rumor had it, engender as many as twenty-three royal bastards. In my view, the origin of the queen’s invincible loathing for El Escorial—she would only return there to be buried—lay not just in the building’s grim atmosphere, which fitted so ill with her own cheerful disposition, but in memories of her husband’s dalliance with La Castro, whose moment of triumph, by the way, was short-lived, for she was soon to be replaced in the king’s capricious favors by another actress, the sixteen-year-old María Calderón. Philip IV was always more attracted to lowborn women—actresses, kitchen maids, serving wenches, and whores—than to ladies of the court. It must be said, though, that unlike in France, where some royal mistresses ended up having more power than certain queens, in Spain, appearances were always preserved and no courtesan ever held sway at court. Prim old Castile, which had embraced the rigid Burgundy etiquette brought from Ghent by the emperor Charles, insisted that nothing less than an abyss should separate the majesty of its monarchs from the rest of vulgar humanity. This is why, once the affair was over—for no one could ride a horse once ridden by the king nor enjoy a woman whom he had made his mistress—the king’s concubines were usually forced to enter a convent, as were any daughters born of such illegitimate loves. This provoked one court wit to pen the following inevitable lines:
Traveler, this house, this monument
Is not what it appears:
The king first made it a bawdy house
And then a holy convent.
Such incidents, plus the money squandered on parties, masked balls, and festive lights, on corruption, wars, and bad governance, all contribute to painting a moral portrait of the Spain of that time, which, though still a powerful and much-feared nation, was unstoppably going to the devil. Our lethargic king was full of good intentions, but incapable of doing his duty; during his long forty-four-year reign, he placed all responsibility in the hands of others and devoted himself to fornicating, hunting, indulging his every pleasure, and plundering the nation’s coffers. Meanwhile, we lost Rosellón and Portugal; Catalonia, Sicily, and Naples rose up in revolt; Andalusian and Aragonese nobles conspired against us; and our regiments, unpaid and therefore hungry and indisciplined, could only stand by, impassive and silent, still faithful to their glorious legend, and allow themselves to be destroyed. To quote the admirable last line—with all due respect to Señor de Quevedo—of don Luis de Góngora’s sonnet “On the Fleeting Nature of Beauty and Life,” Spain was reduced to “earth, smoke, dust, and shadow—naught.”
As Captain Alatriste said to me once during a mutiny near Breda: “Your king is your king.” Philip IV was the monarch Fate gave me, and I had no other; he was the only king that men of my class and my century knew. No one offered us a choice. And that is why I continued to fight for him and was loyal to him until his death, both as an innocent youth and as a scornful, clear-sighted, battle-worn man, and much later, too, in my more charitable maturity, when, as captain of his guard, I saw him transformed into a prematurely old man, bent beneath the burden of defeat, disappointment, and regret, broken by the ruin of his nation and by the blows of life itself. I used to accompany him alone to El Escorial, where he would spend long hours in silence in the solitude of that ghostly pantheon containing the illustrious remains of his ancestors, the kings whose mighty inheritance he had so wretchedly squandered. The Spain that came to rest on his shoulders was very great indeed, and he, alas for us, was not a man to bear such a weight.
He had allowed himself to be ambushed in the most ridiculous fashion, but there was no time now for lamentations. Resigned to the inevitable, Diego Alatriste dug his spurs in hard and forced his horse to ford the stream, splashing noisily through the water. The two horsemen were closing on him, but the people he was really worried about were two new arrivals, who had emerged out of the trees on the opposite bank and were riding toward him with what were clearly evil intentions.
He looked about him to see what possibilities lay open to him. He had sensed danger ever since he left the inn at Galapagar; then, as he was riding down the hill toward the stream and could just make out the gray mass of El Escorial in the distance, he realized that the men he had seen at the inn were following him. His professional instincts told him at once who they were. He had immediately spurred the bay on, hoping to force the horse across the stream and up the hill as quickly as possible with the intention of reaching the nearby woods, where he would at least have the advantage of surprise. However, the appearance of two more horsemen made the situation clear. They were obviously what, in the army, he would have called “beaters”—a patrol sent out to look for someone—and given the way things stood, the captain had few doubts about who that “someone” was.
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His horse almost slipped on the pebbles in the streambed but managed to make it to the other side without falling, about twenty paces ahead of the men galloping toward him along the bank. The captain observed them with a practiced eye: they both had bushy mustaches, were dressed as hunters or gamekeepers, armed with pistols and swords, and one of them had a harquebus resting crosswise on his saddle. They were obviously professionals. The captain glanced behind him and saw the two men from the inn urging on their mounts and racing down the hill from Galapagar. It was all as clear as day. He pulled up his horse and, gripping the reins between his teeth, quietly drew his pistol and cocked it. Then he cocked the other pistol which he had ready in the holster on the saddle-tree. He was not expert in such fighting methods, but dismounting in order to face four mounted men would have been madness. The wryly consoling thought occurred to him that whether on foot, on horseback, or accompanied by a chaconne, there was nothing for it but to fight. When the two men on the bank were about four feet away, he stood up in the stirrups, took careful aim, arm outstretched, and had time enough, as he squeezed the trigger and unleashed a bullet, to see the look on the face of the man he had singled out. He would have killed him, too, if his own horse hadn’t started and caused his aim to suffer. The noise and the flash caused the rider with the harquebus to pull his horse up short to avoid the shot. His companion did the same, tugging on the reins. This gave Alatriste time to wheel his horse around, put the discharged pistol away, and take out the other. With this in his hand, he intended to drive his horse forward and get closer, so as not to miss the second time. His mount, however, was no war horse and, terrified by the noise of the pistol shot, set off at a gallop downstream. Cursing, Alatriste found himself with his back to the men and unable to take proper aim. He yanked so hard at the reins that the horse reared up, almost unseating him. When he finally managed to regain control, he had a man on either side of him, each with a pistol in his hand, and the men from the inn were now splashing their way toward him across the stream. They had their swords unsheathed, but the captain was more concerned about the pistols threatening him on either flank. And so he commended himself to the devil, raised his pistol and shot the nearer man at point-blank range. This time, he saw the man slump back onto his horse’s rump, one leg sticking up and the other caught in the stirrup. Then, throwing down the pistol and grabbing his sword, Alatriste watched as the other man raised his pistol and aimed it in his direction. Behind the pistol, Alatriste could see the man’s fierce eyes, as fixed and black as the mouth of the barrel pointing straight at him. “This is where it all ends,” he thought, “and there’s nothing to be done about it.” He brandished his sword anyway, in an attempt at least, with that one last impulse, to cut down the bastard who was about to kill him. And then, to his surprise, he saw that the black hole of the barrel was aimed instead at his horse’s head, and found himself splattered by the creature’s blood and brains. He fell forward onto the dead beast and was thrown off onto the stony bank. Dazed, he tried to get up, but his strength failed him and he lay motionless, his face pressed into the mud. Shit. His back hurt as badly as if he had broken his spine. He glanced wildly around for his sword, but saw only a pair of boots and spurs in front of him. One of the boots kicked him in the face, and he lost consciousness.