Shots roared closer with every minute. They seemed to be coming from every direction. I stumbled up the slope to the top of the dike, disoriented, and I realized that I had lost a sense of which was the good side and which the bad. I could no longer see the red glow in the distance, and no one was running past me anymore. Nor could I remember which direction the man who had fallen down had come from or determine in which direction to run. My head was filled with a silent scream of panic. Think! I told myself. Think calmly, Íñigo Balboa, or you will never see the dawn. I knelt on one knee, forcing my reason to tame the wild beating of blood at my temples. The soldier had fallen into quiet water, I remembered. And then I realized that I was hearing the soft sound of the Merck flowing at the bottom of the slope on my right. The river flows toward Sevenberge, I reasoned. And we had come along the right bank, crossing to the left over the pontoon bridge. I was, therefore, facing in the wrong direction. So I turned and began to run, cleaving the dark night as if instead of Hollanders I had the very devil behind me.
I have run like that only a few times in my life. Your Mercies should try it, soaked in water and mud in the black of night. I ran blindly, with my head down, risking a roll down the slope straight into the Merck. As the cold, moist air entered my lungs it turned to fire, and I felt as if my chest were being pricked by red-hot needles. Then, just as I was beginning to wonder if I had gone too far, I came to the pontoons. I grabbed on to the stakes and concentrated on crossing, slipping on the wet wood. I had barely reached the other side, back on solid ground, when a flash lit the darkness and the whir of a harquebus ball passed a hairsbreadth from my head.
“Antwerp!” I yelled, throwing myself to the ground.
“Bugger it,” a voice replied.
Two pale silhouettes, crouched down, were outlined against the fog.
“You’ve just had a lucky escape, comrade,” said the second voice.
I got to my feet and went toward them. I could not see their faces, but I did see the white of their shirts and the sinister shadows of the harquebuses that had been so close to sending me to my rest:
“Did Your Mercies not see my shirt?” I asked, still breathless from running and fright.
“What shirt?” one asked.
I felt my chest, surprised, and did not swear only because I was still not old enough, nor was I in the habit of doing so. During the attack, I had lain face down for so long on the dike, my shirt was now dark with mud.
9. THE COLONEL AND
THE BANNER
During that time, Maurice of Nassau died, to the sorrow of the Estates General and the gratification of the true religion, but not before wresting from us, by way of farewell, the city of Goch, burning the supplies we had stored in Ginneken, and attempting to take Antwerp with a surprise attack that ended up backfiring on him. That heretic, the paladin of Calvin’s abominable sect, would go to hell without allaying his obsessive hunger to end the siege of Breda. To offer our condolences to the Dutch, our cannons spent the day tidily dropping seventy-pound balls on the walls of the city, and at daybreak, through the efforts of our sappers, we blew up a bulwark with thirty good citizens inside, giving them a rather rude awakening and demonstrating that God does not always reward the early riser.
At that point Breda was no longer a matter of military interest to Spain but, rather, one of reputation. The world was in suspense, awaiting the triumph or the failure of the troops of the Catholic king. Even the sultan of the Turks—may Christ visit foul excrescences upon him—was awaiting the outcome to see whether our lord and king would emerge with more or less power. And in Europe the eyes of every king and prince, particularly those of France and England, were focused on the stalemate, eager to benefit from our misfortune or to grieve over Spanish gains, which was equally true in the Mediterranean of the Venetians and even the Roman pope. For His Holiness, despite being the Divinity’s earthly vicar, with all the attendant paraphernalia, and also despite the fact that it was we Spanish who were doing his dirty work in Europe, bankrupting ourselves in defense of God and the Most Blessed Mary, harassed us whenever he could, because he was jealous of our influence in Italy. There is nothing like being powerful and feared for a couple of centuries to cause enemies with malicious intentions, whether or not they wear the pope’s triple crown, to spring up on every side. Under the mantle of pleasant words, smiles, and diplomacy, they take painstaking care in completely buggering you. Although in the case of the sovereign pontiff, his biliousness was, to a degree, understandable. After all, only a century before the problem of Breda, his predecessor, Clement VII, had had to take to his heels, tucking up his cassock as he ran and taking refuge in the Castel Sant’Angelo, when the Spaniards and German mercenaries of our Charles V—who had carried an unpaid bill since the time of El Cid—had attacked his walls and sacked Rome without respecting cardinals’ palaces, or women, or convents. It is therefore only fair we should remember that even popes have a good memory and their own crumb of honor.
“I have a letter for you, Íñigo.”
Surprised, I looked up at Captain Alatriste. He was standing at the entrance to the hut we had constructed of blankets, fascines, and mud, where I was spending time with some of my comrades. He was wearing his hat and had thrown his frayed wool cape around his shoulders, its hem slightly lifted by the sheath of his sword. The broad brim of his hat, the heavy mustache and aquiline nose, accentuated the leanness of his weathered face, now unnaturally pale. He had not been in good health for several days, due to some foul water—our bread was moldy as well, and meat, when we had it, was full of worms—that had set his body on fire and poisoned his blood with fever. The captain, nonetheless, was no friend to bloodletting or purges; he always said those measures killed more often than they cured. So he was just returning from the camp of the sutlers, where an acquaintance who acted as both barber and apothecary had brewed a concoction of herbs to lower his fever.
“A letter for me?”
“So it seems.”
I left Jaime Correas and the others and, brushing the dirt from my breeches, went outside. We were far out of range of the walls, near the palisade where we kept the carts and dray horses, and close to certain ramshackle hovels that served as taverns when there was wine, and as brothels with German, Italian, Flemish, and Spanish women for the troops. It was a favorite place for us mochileros to forage for food, with all the cunning and mischief our calling and our youth lent us as we sought ways to live in comparative comfort. It was rare that we did not return from our pilfering with two or three eggs, some apples, tallow candles, or some useful object we could sell or trade. With such industry I offered some succor to Captain Alatriste and his comrades, and when I had a real stroke of luck I bowed to my own pleasure, which might include a visit, along with Jaime Correas, to La Mendoza’s shack, where, since the conversation between Diego Alatriste and the Valencian Candau on the banks of the dike, my entry had never been disputed. The captain, who knew what I was about, had discreetly admonished me, saying simply that women who follow soldiers are the source of pustules, pestilence, and sword fights. The truth is that I did not know what the captain’s relations with such females had been in other times, but I can say that never in Flanders did I see him enter a house or a tent with a swan swinging at the entrance. I did learn, it is true, that once or twice, with Captain Bragado’s permission, he had gone to Oudkerk, which was now the garrison of a Burgundian bandera, to visit the Flemish woman I have spoken of elsewhere. It was rumored that on his last visit, Alatriste had exchanged harsh words with the husband, whose arse he had ended up kicking into the canal, and had even had to draw his sword when a pair of Burgundians tried to squeeze into a procession they’d not been invited to join. But since that time, he had not been back.
As for me, my sentiments regarding the captain were beginning to be ambiguous, although I was barely aware of it. On the one hand, I obeyed him implicitly, offering him the sincere devotion that Your Mercies know so well. On the other hand, like any yo
uth growing out of his boyhood, I was beginning to feel the weight of his shadow. Flanders had catalyzed the transformations in me natural for a boy who lived among soldiers and who furthermore had had the opportunity to fight for his life, his reputation, and his king. Also, I had recently been troubled by questions that my master’s silences no longer answered. All of this was making me consider the possibility of enlisting as a soldier, and although I was not yet old enough—it was rare at that time to serve if one was younger than seventeen or eighteen, which meant I would have to lie—somehow I thought that a turn of fortune might somehow facilitate my ambition. After all, Captain Alatriste himself had enlisted when he was barely fifteen, during the siege of Hulst. That had been during the famous exercise conceived to divert the enemy from a planned attack on the fort of La Estrella, when mochileros, pages, and every available servant had marched out armed with pikes, banners, and drums and paraded along a dike, tricking the enemy into taking them for replacement troops. The assault that followed was bloody; so bloody that most of the youths, finding themselves with weapons and their zeal kindled by the battle, ran to back up their masters, courageously jumping into the fire. Diego Alatriste, who at that time was a drummer in the bandera of Captain Pérez de Espila, went with them. Some, Alatriste among them, fought so bravely that Prince Albert, who was already governor of Flanders and was personally overseeing the siege, rewarded them by letting them enlist.
“It came this morning with the post from Spain.”
I took the letter the captain was holding out to me. It was written on fine paper; the seal was intact, and my name was on the front:
Señor don Diego Alatriste * Attention of Íñigo Balboa * In the Bandera of Captain don Carmelo Bragado, of the Cartagena Tercio * Military post of Flanders
My hands trembled as I turned over the envelope sealed with the initials A. de A. Without a word, and feeling Alatriste’s eyes on me, I slowly walked some distance away to where the Germans’ women were washing clothes by a narrow branch of the river. The Germans, like some Spaniards, took as their women former whores who assuaged their desires and also relieved them of the misery of washing soldiers’ clothing. In addition, some sold liquors, firewood, tobacco, and pipes to those who needed them, and I have already written how in Breda I saw German women working in the trenches to help their husbands. Near the makeshift laundry, where a tree that had been felled and trimmed for cutting firewood lay across a large rock, I sat, unable to tear my eyes from those initials, incredulously holding Angélica’s letter in my hands. I knew that the captain was watching me the whole time, so I waited for my heart to stop pounding and then, trying not to reveal my impatience, I broke the seal and unfolded the letter.
Señor don Íñigo:
I have had notice of your pursuits, and I am pleased to know that you are serving in Flanders. Believe me when I say that I envy you for that.
I hope the rancor you hold for me over the difficulties you must have suffered following our last meeting is not too great. After all, I did one day hear you say that you would die for me. Take it therefore as one of life’s tests, and remember that along with the bad times life can also offer satisfactions such as serving our lord and king or, perhaps, receiving this letter of mine.
I must confess that I cannot help but recall you every time I pass by the Acero fountain. However, I understand that you lost the handsome amulet I gave you there—something unpardonable in such an accomplished gallant as yourself.
I hope to see you someday here at court bedecked in sword and spurs. Until then, count on my memory and my smile.
Angélica de Alquézar
P.S. I rejoice that you are still alive. I have plans for you.
I had finished reading the letter—I read it three times, passing from stupor to happiness, and then to melancholy—and had sat for a long time staring at the folded paper lying on the thick patches that repaired the knees of my breeches. I was in Flanders, at war, and she was thinking of me. There will be occasion—should I still have the desire, and the life, to continue recounting to Your Mercies the adventures of Captain Alatriste as well as my own—to detail the plans Angélica de Alquézar had for my person in that twenty-fifth year of the century, she being twelve or thirteen years old at the time and I on the road to fifteen. Plans that, had I divined them, would have made me tremble with both terror and delirium. I shall tell you here only that her beautiful and evil little head, graced with blue eyes and blond curls, would—for some obscure reason that can be explained only by the secrets that certain women hold in the depths of their souls from the time they are young girls—place my neck and my eternal salvation in peril many times in the future. And she would always do it in the same contradictory manner: coldly and deliberately. Yet I believe that at the same time she sought my misfortune, she also loved me. And that was how it would be until she was taken from me—or until I freed myself from her, God mend me, nor am I sure which was the case—by her early and tragic death.
“I wonder if you have something to tell me,” said Captain Alatriste.
He had spoken very softly, with nothing nuanced in his tone. I looked up. He was sitting beside me on the large rock beneath the tree. He held his hat in his hand and was staring with an absent air toward the distant walls of Breda.
“There is not much to say,” I replied.
He nodded slowly, as if accepting what I said, and lightly stroked his mustache. Silence. His motionless profile made me think of a dark eagle resting high on a cliff. I noted the two scars on his face—one on an eyebrow and the other on his forehead—and the one on the back of his left hand, a memento Gualterio Malatesta had bestowed at the Las Animas gate. There were more scars hidden beneath his clothing, eight in total. I looked at the burnished hilt of his sword, the cobbled boots tied around his legs with harquebus cords, the rags visible through the holes in the soles, the mended tears in his threadbare brown cape. Perhaps, I thought, he had once been in love. Perhaps, in his way, he still was, and that included Caridad la Lebrijana and the silent blonde Flemish woman in Oudkerk.
I heard him sigh softly, barely a breath expelled from his lungs, and then he made a move to get to his feet. I handed him the letter. He took it without a word and looked at me closely before he started reading, and now it was I who stared at the distant walls of Breda, as expressionless as he had been a moment before. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the hand with the scar rise to stroke his mustache again. Then he read. Finally I heard the crackle of the paper as he folded it, and once again I held the letter in my hands.
“There are things…” he began after a moment.
Then he stopped, and I thought that was all he would say, which would not have been strange in a man given more to silences than to words.
“Things,” he continued finally, “that they know from the time they are born. Though they are not even aware that they know them.”
Again he cut himself short. I heard him shifting uncomfortably, seeking a way to finish.
“Things it takes us men a lifetime to learn.”
Then silence again, and this time he did not say anything more. Nothing in the vein of “Take care, guard against our enemy’s niece,” or other comments that one might have expected under the circumstances, and that I, as he undoubtedly knew, would have immediately ignored with all the arrogance of insolent youth. For a while he stared at the distant city, then put on his hat and stood up, settling his cape over his shoulders. And as I sat and watched him on his way back to the trenches, I wondered how many women, how many wounds, how many roads, and how many deaths—some owed to others and some to oneself—a man must know for those words to remain unspoken.
It was mid-May when Henry of Nassau, Maurice’s successor, tried to test Fortune one last time, attempting to deliver Breda and to leave our bollocks buried in the ashes. It was the whim of fate that at that time, just on the eve of the day chosen by the Hollanders for their attack, our colonel and some of his staff were making a round of inspec
tions along the northwest dikes and that Captain Alatriste’s squad, chosen that week for the duty, was serving as escort. Don Pedro de la Daga was traveling with his usual ostentation: he and a half-dozen others on horseback with his commander-of-the-tercio standard, six Germans with halberds, and a dozen soldiers, among them Alatriste, Copons, and other comrades on foot, harquebuses and muskets shouldered, clearing the way for the general’s party. I was bringing up the rear, carrying my pack filled with provisions and a supply of powder and balls, looking at the reflection of the string of men and horses in the quiet water of the canals, which the sun was tinting even more red as it sank toward the horizon. It was a peaceful dusk, with a clear sky and pleasant temperature; nothing seemed to announce the events that were about to be unleashed.
There had been movement of Dutch troops in the area, and don Pedro de la Daga had orders from General Spínola to take a look at the Italian positions near the Merck River, on the narrow road of the Sevenberge and Strudenberge dikes, to ascertain whether they needed to be reinforced with a bandera of Spaniards. Jiñalasoga’s intention was to stop for the night at the Terheyden garrison, which was under the command of the sergeant-major of Campo Látaro’s tercio, don Carlos Roma, and to devote the next day to making the necessary arrangements. We arrived at the dikes and the Terheyden fort before sunset, and everything seemed to be going as planned. Our colonel and his officers were lodged in the tents that had been prepared for them, while we were assigned to a small redoubt of wood stakes and gabions beneath the stars, where we wrapped ourselves in our capes after the meager mouthful the Italians, good and happy comrades, offered on our arrival. Captain Alatriste went to the colonel’s tent to inquire if he might offer some service, and don Pedro de la Daga, with his usual disdain, replied that he had no need of him and that he should do as he wished. Upon the captain’s return, as we were in a place unknown to us and there were both honorable and trustworthy men within Látaro’s contingent, he decided that with the Italians or without them we should set up a guard. And so Mendieta was chosen for the first watch, one of the Olivares brothers for the second, and Alatriste kept the third for himself. Mendieta, therefore, took his place close to the fire, his harquebus primed and cord lit, while the rest of us lay down to sleep any which way we could.