“With all due respect, Your Mercy,” Idiáquez intervened, “Diego Alatriste is a veteran soldier. Everyone knows that his reputation is irreproachable. I am sure that—”
The colonel interrupted him with a curt gesture. “Irreproachable reputations are not granted for life.”
“Diego Alatriste is a good soldier,” Captain Bragado spoke up from the background; he had become embarrassed by his own silence.
Don Pedro de la Dago quieted him with another brusque gesture. “Any good soldier—and in my tercio they are as numerous as grains of sand—would give his arm to be at the Den Bosch gate tomorrow morning.”
Diego Alatriste looked straight into the colonel’s eyes. His voice was slow and low, as cold as the fingertips tingling to draw his dagger.
“I use my two arms to comply with my duty to the king. He is the one who pays me…when I am paid.” His pause seemed infinitely long. “As for my honor and my reputation, have no care, Your Mercy, for I see to that, with no need for anyone to offer me duels or give me lessons.”
The colonel looked at Alatriste as if he intended to remember him for the rest of his life. It was clear that he was reviewing in his mind everything he had heard, sentence by sentence, seeking one word, a tone, a nuance, that would allow him to string a rope in the nearest tree. This was so obvious that the hand covered by Alatriste’s hat slid toward his left hip, close to the hilt of his dagger. At the first sign, he thought with resigned calm, I will put this dagger through your throat, pull out my sword, and let God or the devil prevail.
“This man may return to the trenches,” Jiñalasoga said finally.
No doubt the memory of the recent mutiny tempered the colonel’s natural inclination to make use of the noose. Bragado and Idiáquez, who had been watching Diego Alatriste’s hands, seemed to relax with no little relief. Cloaking the relief that he too was feeling, Alatriste nodded respectfully, turned, and walked from the tent into the fresh air, pausing beside the halberds of the German sentinels who could, so easily, have been leading him on a scenic trip to the gallows. He stood stock-still for a moment, gratefully observing a sun that was disappearing below the dikes, a sun that he was now certain of seeing rise the next morning. Then he clapped his hat onto his head and started back to the parapets leading to the Cemetery ravelin.
That night Captain Alatriste, wrapped in his cape, lay awake almost till dawn, gazing up at the stars. It was neither the colonel’s disfavor nor fear of dishonor that kept him awake while his comrades snored around him. He did not give a fig for whatever version of the story might circulate through the tercio, for Idiáquez and Bragado knew him well and would give the episode the report it deserved. Furthermore, as he had said to don Pedro de la Daga, he would earn his own respect among his equals as well as those who were not. No, it was something else that denied him sleep. And that something was his fervent wish that at least one of the guzmanes would survive the next day at the Den Bosch gate. Preferably Carlos del Arco. For then, he told himself as his eyes drank in the firmament, time passes, life takes many turns, and a man never knows what old acquaintance he might meet in just the right place, at just the right time: in the quiet darkness, with no one around to hear the sound of ringing swords.
The next day, with our men watching from our trenches and the enemy from theirs as well as from atop the city walls, five men walked forward from the lines of our lord and king toward the encounter while another five emerged from the Den Bosch gate. These five, according to the rumor running around the camp, were three Dutchmen, a Scot, and a Frenchman. As for ours, Captain Bragado had chosen as the fifth member of the party Second Lieutenant Minaya, a thirty-year-old from the city of Soria: honorable, trustworthy, with good legs and a better hand. Both teams came wearing a sword and two pistols at the waist but no dagger; it was said that the challengers had not included them because everyone knows how dangerous a Spaniard with a dagger can be in close combat.
I had returned the previous night from three days of foraging—which had taken me, along with a crew of mochileros, almost to the banks of the Mosa—and now I was standing in the crowd with my friend Jaime Correas on top of some gabions, for once unafraid of being struck by a musket ball. Hundreds of soldiers were watching from every quarter, and it was rumored that the Marqués de los Balbases, our General Spínola, was himself observing the challenge in the company of don Pedro de la Daga and the captains and colonels of the remaining tercios. As for Diego Alatriste, he was in one of the forward trenches with Copons, Garrote, and others from his squad, with very little to say but with his eyes firmly fixed on the antagonists. Second Lieutenant Minaya, no doubt informed by our Captain Bragado, had done something that was the act of a good comrade: He had come by earlier that morning and asked to borrow one of Alatriste’s pistols, using the pretext that he had some problem with his, and now he was walking to the fight with that pistol at his waist. It said a great deal in his favor and prevented acrimony within the bandera. I will add here that many years later, after Rocroi, when the vagaries of fortune had made me an officer in the Spanish guard of King Philip, our lord and king, I had occasion to do a favor for a young recruit named Minaya. I did so without a moment’s hesitation, remembering the day when his father had the good grace to wear Captain Alatriste’s pistol as he went to the encounter below the walls of Breda.
So there they were that April morning, with a warm sun overhead and thousands of eyes focused on them: five against five. They met in a small meadow that sloped down about a hundred paces toward the Den Bosch gate onto unclaimed land. There were no preliminaries, no doffing of hats or other courtesies. Instead, as one group neared the other they began to fire and to draw their swords, at which both camps of watchers, who had until that instant observed in mortal silence, burst into a clamor of encouraging cries to their respective comrades. I know that from the beginning of time, well-intentioned people have condemned violence and preached peace and God’s word, and I, better than many, know what war does to a man’s body and soul, but despite all that, despite my capacity to reason, despite my common sense and the lucidity lent by years, I cannot help but shiver with admiration when I witness the courage of valiant men. And God knows those men were.
Don Luis de Bobadilla, the younger of the two guzmanes, went down with the first shots, while the others closed in on each other with great energy and deadly intent. One of the Dutchmen was felled by a pistol shot that broke his neck, and another of his companions, the Scot, was wounded in the torso, run through by the sword of Pedro Martín, who lost it there. Finding himself with no sword and two discharged pistols, he was then knifed in the throat and chest, falling upon the man he had just killed. As for don Carlos del Arco, he engaged the Frenchman so skillfully that, between thrust and counterthrust, he was able to aim a shot at his face, though he then withdrew from the fight, hobbled by a wicked wound to his thigh. Minaya finished off the Frenchman with Captain Alatriste’s pistol and badly wounded the second Dutchman with his own, emerging without a scratch himself. And Eguiluz, his left hand crippled by a musket ball but with his sword in his right, dealt two clean blows to the last of their opponents, one on an arm and the other to the flank. The heretic, seeing himself wounded and alone, resolved, like Antigone, not to flee exactly, but to fall back and check his resources. The three Spaniards still standing relieved their adversaries of their weapons and their bands, which were orange, according to the custom of those who served the Estates General. They would even have carried the bodies of Bobadilla and Martín to our lines had the Dutch, furious at the outcome, not consoled themselves over their defeat with a hailstorm of musket balls. Our men, therefore, were slowly quitting the field when a musketeer’s lead struck Eguiluz in the kidneys, and although, helped by his companions, he reached the trenches, he died three days later. As for the seven bodies, they lay on open ground almost all day, until there was a brief truce at dusk and each side was able to recover its own.
No one in the tercio questioned Captain Alatri
ste’s honor. The proof was that a week later, when the decision was made to attack the Sevenberge dike, he and his squad were among the forty-four men chosen for the task. They left our position at sunset, taking advantage of the first night of heavy fog to conceal their movements. They were under the command of Captains Bragado and Torralba, and they all wore their shirts on the outside of their doublets and buffcoats, in order to recognize one another in the dark. This was common practice among Spanish troops as well as the origin of the term encamisadas, being “shirted,” given to night maneuvers. This attack was designed to capitalize on the natural aggressiveness and skill of our men in hand-to-hand combat: infiltrate a heretic camp, catch them unawares, kill as many as possible, burn their barracks and tents—though only when they were about to retire, to prevent providing unnecessary light—and get out at top speed. The troops were carefully chosen, and among Spaniards it was considered an honor to participate in an encamisada, so much so that often there were squabbles among the soldiers who wanted to be one of the party, as it was a bitter affront not to be included. The rules were strict, and customarily the execution of the raid was extremely well disciplined, in order to save lives in the confusion of the night. Of those undertaken in Flanders, the one at Mons was famous: five hundred Germans under salary of the House of Orange dead, their camp burnt to ashes. In another, fifty were chosen to carry out the night foray, but when the appointed hour came, soldiers arrived from every direction, claiming to have been selected. When finally they did set off, instead of the usual silence, there were boisterous arguments in the middle of the night, more like a Moorish raid than a Spanish encamisada, with three hundred men racing along the road, trying to reach the goal ahead of their comrades. The enemy awoke to see coming toward them a swell of maddened, yelling demons in white shirts, slaughtering indiscriminately and brawling among themselves, competing to see who could kill better and more.
But as for Sevenberge, our General Spínola’s plan was to travel the two long hours to the dike with great stealth and silence, surprise those guarding it, and destroy the work, breaching the locks with axes and burning everything in sight. It had been decided that a half-dozen of us mochileros would be needed to carry the equipment for the fire and the sapping. So that night saw me in the line of Spaniards marching along the right bank of the Merck, where the fog was thickest. In the hazy darkness all you could hear was the muffled sound of footsteps—we were wearing espadrilles or boots wrapped in rags, and we knew we would pay with our lives if we were to speak aloud, light a cord, prime pistols or harquebuses—and the white shirts moved through the night like ghostly shrouds. Some time before, I had been forced to sell my beautiful Solingen, for we mochileros were not allowed to carry a sword, so I had only my dagger snugged into my belt. But I was not, pardiez, short of a load: The large pouch over my shoulders was packed with charges of powder and sulfur wrapped in petards, garlands of pitch to set the fires, and two sharpened hatchets for splintering the wood of the locks.
I was trembling with cold despite the coarse wool jerkin I was wearing beneath my shirt, which looked white only at night and had more holes in it than a flute. The fog created an unreal atmosphere around us, soaking my hair and dribbling down my face as if it were fine rain or the chirimiri of my homeland, making everything slippery and causing me to walk with great care, for if I slipped on the wet grass it would mean tumbling into the cold waters of the Merck with ballast of sixty pounds on my back. The night and the misty air allowed me to see about as far as a fried flounder might: two or three vague white splotches before me and two or three behind. The closest soldier, whose progress I was diligently following, was Captain Alatriste. His squad was in the vanguard, preceded only by Captain Bragado and two Walloon guides from the Soest tercio, or what remained of it, whose mission, apart from acting as guides since they knew this region well, consisted of outwitting the Dutch sentinels and getting close enough to cut their throats before they had time to sound the alarm. To do that they had chosen a route that entered enemy territory after passing between large swamps and peat bogs and along very narrow paths that often became dikes where men could walk only in single file.
We crossed over to the side of the river by means of a palisade-reinforced pontoon bridge that led to a dike separating the left bank from the swamps. The white blur of Captain Alatriste moved on in silence, as always. I had watched him slowly equip himself at sunset: buffcoat beneath his shirt and outside it the large belt with sword, dagger, and the pistol Second Lieutenant Minaya had returned to him, its pan well greased to protect it from the wet. He also tied to his belt a small flask of powder, a pouch with ten musket balls, and spare flint, tinder, and steel, should they be needed. Before tying on the powder, he had checked its color, not too black or too gray; its grain, which was hard and fine; and touched a little to his tongue to test the saltpeter. Then he had asked Copons for his whetstone and spent a long time sharpening both edges of his dagger. Those in the lead, which was his group, were not carrying harquebuses or muskets, for the first assault would be made with blades until the site was secured for their comrades. For that task it was best to be lightly armed, with hands free of encumbrance. The quartermaster of our bandera had asked for young and able mochileros, and Jaime Correas and I had volunteered, reminding him that we had already performed well in the surprise attack at Oudkerk. When Captain Alatriste saw me with my shirt on the outside and my dagger in my belt, he had not said that it seemed a good idea to him, but then again, he had not said it didn’t. All he did was nod and point to one of the packs. Then, in the misty light of the bonfires, we all knelt, prayed an Our Father in a murmur that ran down the rows, crossed ourselves, and started off toward the northwest.
The line suddenly stopped, and the men crouched down and in low voices sent back the password, which Captain Bragado had decided only then: Antwerp. Everything had been so well planned before we left that, without need for orders or commentary, a succession of white shirts now filed past me, dividing to the left and right. I heard the splashing of men along both sides of the dike, wading in water up to their waists, and the soldier behind me touched my shoulder and took the pack. His face was a dark blur, and I could hear his agitated breathing as he fastened the straps and continued forward. When I turned back and looked ahead, Captain Alatriste’s shirt had disappeared into the darkness and the fog. Now the last shadows passed me by, fading away with the muted sounds of steel being drawn from sheaths and the soft chink chink of harquebuses and pistols finally being loaded and primed. I went a few steps farther with them, and then I lay face down on the edge of the slope, on the wet grass where the soldiers’ footsteps had churned up mud. Someone crawled up beside me from behind. It was Jaime Correas, and the two of us stayed there, talking in whispers, staring anxiously into the darkness that had swallowed forty-four Spaniards who meant to give the heretics a bad night.
About the time it took for two rosaries passed by. My comrade and I were numb with cold, and we pressed close to share our warmth. We could hear nothing but the water running along the side of the dike leading to the river.
“They’re taking a long time,” Jaime whispered.
I did not answer. At that moment I was thinking of Captain Alatriste in cold water up to his chest, pistol held high to keep the powder dry, a dagger or sword in the other hand, creeping up on the Dutch sentinels guarding the locks. Then I thought of Caridad la Lebrijana and ended up thinking about Angélica de Alquézar as well. Often, I told myself, women do not know what perfection and perdition lie in the hearts of men.
A harquebus shot rang out: only one, distant, isolated, in the night and fog. I estimated it to be more than three hundred paces before us, and we flattened ourselves against the slope even more. The silence returned for an instant, and then a furious succession of shots rang out, pistols and muskets. On edge, feverish from the uproar, Jaime and I tried to peer into the dark but to no avail. Now the firing was coming from both directions, growing louder and more freque
nt, reverberating across sky and earth as if a storm were discharging its thunder and lightning under the cover of darkness. There was a sharp, loud report, and two more followed. Then we could see that the fog was lifting a little: A pale, milky, then reddish glow grew, diffusing itself in the tiny droplets that filled the air and were reflected in the dark water below the slope where we lay. The Sevenberge dike was aflame.
I never knew how much time had passed, but I do know that in the distance the night was roaring like hell itself. Finally we sat up a little, fascinated, and at that moment we heard the sound of steps running toward us down the dike. Then, a succession of white blurs, shirts racing through the darkness, began to take shape through the fog, passing us and heading in the direction of the Spanish camp. The eruptions of shots continued from the harquebuses ahead of us as the pale silhouettes continued to run past, with the sound of footsteps sloshing through mud, oaths, ragged breathing, and the moan of someone wounded being helped along by his comrades. Now the crack of muskets was coming closer, and the white shirts, which had at first arrived in clusters, were beginning to thin out.
“Let’s go,” said Jaime, jumping up and breaking into a run.
I in turn sprang up, spurred by a wave of panic. I did not want to be left behind, alone. A few stragglers were still passing us, and in each white splotch I tried to make out the silhouette of Captain Alatriste. One shadow was staggering along the dike, running with difficulty, its breathing choked by the moan of pain that escaped with each step. Before the figure reached me it fell and rolled down the slope, and I heard it splash into the water. Without thinking, I jumped down the slope after it, into water up to my knees, feeling through the dark until I touched a motionless body. I felt a corselet beneath the shirt and a bearded face, icy as death itself. It was not the captain.