Captain Alatriste Read online

  "You are incredible, Alatriste." He took two steps, stopped again, and looked at the captain with the same expression, "incredible."

  To use the word "friendship" would be an exaggeration in defining the relationship between Guadalmedina and the former soldier, but we could speak of mutual appreciation—within the limits of both men. Alvaro de la Marca felt sincere esteem for the captain. That tale had begun when in his youth Diego Alatriste served with distinction in Flanders, fighting under the flags of the old Conde de Guadalmedina, who had more than one opportunity to demonstrate his fondness and appreciation. Later, the fortunes of war had brought the two together, in Naples, and though Alatriste was a simple soldier, he had rendered the son of his former general some services during the disastrous day of the Kerkennah Islands. Alvaro de la Marca had not forgotten, and when, after inheriting fortune and titles he had exchanged his weapons for life at court, he did not turn away from the captain. From time to time he hired his services as a swordsman: to collect debts, to escort him on romantic and dangerous adventures, or to settle accounts with cuckolded husbands, rivals in love, and annoying creditors. That, incidentally, had been the case with the young Marques de Soto at the Acero fountain, to whom, we remember, following Guadalmedina's prescription, Alatriste had administered a lethal dose of steel.

  But far from taking advantage of that information, with which a good number of the arrogant sycophants who hung around at court seeking a benefice or doubloons would have made hay, Diego Alatriste kept his distance, never coming to the count except on occasions of absolute and desperate need, such as this. Something which, in addition, he would never have done had he not been sure of the nobility of the men he had attacked. And the gravity of what was about to befall him.

  "Are you sure that you did not recognize either of the two masked men who charged you with this commission?"

  "I have told Your Mercy. They seemed respectable men, but I was not able to identify either."

  Guadalmedina again stroked his goatee. "There were only two of them that night?"

  "Two that I recall."

  "And one said to let them live, and the other said to kill them."

  "More or less."

  The count was staring hard at Alatriste. "By my oath! You are hiding something, sir!"

  The captain shrugged, holding his protector's gaze. "Perhaps," he replied calmly.

  Alvaro de la Marca smiled sarcastically, his scrutiny of Alatriste never lessening. They both knew that Alatriste was not going to say a word more than he already had, even if the count threatened to wash his hands of the matter and put him out on the street.

  "Very well," he concluded. "After all, it is your neck."

  The captain, nodded fatalistically. One of the few omissions in the tale told to the count was the role of Fray Emilio Bocanegra. Not because Alatriste had any wish to protect the Inquisitor—who was more to be feared than to be protected—but because, in spite of Alatriste's boundless faith in Guadalmedina, he was not an informer. It was one thing to tell about the masked men, but something else again to denounce the persons who had given him employ, no matter that one of them was the Dominican priest, and that the whole story, and its outcome, might cause Alatriste himself to end up in the less than friendly care of the executioner. The captain was repaying the aristocrat's kindness to him by placing the fate of those Englishmen in his hands—and his along with theirs. But although he was an old soldier and a hired sword, he too had his twisted codes. He was not prepared to break them, even if it cost him his life, and Guadalmedina knew that very well. There had been times when Alvaro de la Marca's name was the one to be given up, but with equal poise the captain had refused to reveal it to questioners. In the limited portion of the world that the two men shared despite their very different lives, those were the rules. And Guadalmedina was not prepared to infringe on them, not even with the Marquis of Buckingham and his companion sitting in his home. It was evident from his expression that Alvaro de la Marca was calculating as quickly as possible the best use he could make of the state secret that chance and Diego Alatriste had placed in his hands.

  A servant was standing respectfully at the door. The count went to him, and Diego Alatriste heard them exchange a few words in low voices. When the domestic retired, Guadalmedina returned to the captain, looking thoughtful.

  "I had advised the English ambassador, but those gentlemen say that it is not desirable for the meeting to take place in my home. So since they have rested, I will have several men I can trust, and me along with them, escort our two guests to the House of Seven Chimneys, to spare them further unpleasant encounters."

  "May I do anything to help Your Mercy?"

  The count looked at him with ironic irritation. "I fear that you have already done enough for today. The most helpful thing you can do is to stay out of it."

  Alatriste nodded, and with a private sigh, resigned, slowly started to leave. Clearly, he could not return home, or take refuge with any close friend, and if Guadalmedina did not offer him lodging, he would be forced to roam the streets at the mercy of his enemies or the constables of Martin Saldana, who might already have been alerted. The count knew all that. He knew also that Diego Alatriste would never ask directly for help; he was too proud. If Guadalmedina did not acknowledge the tacit message, the captain had no choice but to face his fate in the street, with no resources but his sword. But the count was smiling, drawn from his thoughts.

  "You may stay here this night," he said. "And tomorrow we shall see what life has in store. I have ordered that a room be prepared for you."

  Imperceptibly, Alatriste relaxed. Through the half-open door he saw the aristocrat's servants laying out clothing. He watched as two of them brought an old buffcoat and several loaded pistols. Alvaro de la Marca did not seem inclined to expose his unexpected guests to further risk.

  "Within a few hours the news of these gentlemen's arrival will have spread, and all Madrid will be abuzz." The count sighed. "They ask me as a gentleman to keep secret the news of the ambush that you and your companion prepared for them, and also ask that no one know that you helped them find refuge here. All this is very delicate, Alatriste. And more than your neck is involved. Officially, their trip ended without incident at the home of the English ambassador. And that is where we are going to attempt to go right now."

  The count was moving toward the room where his clothing awaited, when suddenly he appeared to remember something.

  "Oh," he added, pausing, "they wish to see you before they go. I do not know how in the devil you came to a peaceful resolution, but after I told them who you are, and how the thing came about, they did not seem to hold too much rancor. Those English and their damned British phlegm! I swear by God and all that is holy that if you had given me the fright you gave them, I would be yelling for your head. I would not have lost a minute in having you murdered."

  The interview was brief, and took place in the enormous vestibule beneath a canvas by Titian that showed Danae on the verge of being impregnated by Zeus in the form of a shower of gold. Alvaro de la Marca, now dressed and equipped as if he planned to assault a Turkish galley, with several pistol grips showing above his waist sash, along with his sword and dagger, led the captain to the place where the Englishmen were waiting to leave, wrapped in their capes and surrounded by the count's servants, they, too, armed to the teeth. Only the drums were lacking to complete their resemblance to a night patrol of soldiers on the eve of a skirmish.

  "Here you have your man," said Guadalmedina sarcastically, indicating the captain.

  The Englishmen had cleaned up and rested from their journey. Their clothing had been brushed and was reasonably presentable, and the younger man was wearing a folded cloth around his neck, supporting the arm on the side of his injury. The other Englishman, the one in gray, whom Alvaro de la Marca had identified as Buckingham, had recovered an arrogance that Alatriste did not recall having seen during the fracas in the lane.

  George Villiers, Marquis of
Buckingham, was already the Lord High Admiral of the English fleet and enjoyed considerable influence in the circle around King James the First. He was ambitious, intelligent, romantic, and adventurous, and it would be only a brief time before he received the ducal title by which history and legend would know him. Now, still young, and quickly ascending toward the highest levels in the Court of Saint James's, he showed obvious annoyance as he stared at his attacker, but Alatriste bore his inspection without wincing. Marquis, archbishop, or villain, this fine-looking fellow brought neither heat nor chill to the captain, be he favorite of King James or first cousin to the pope. It was Fray Emilio Bocanegra and the two masked men who would keep Alatriste from sleeping that night and, he feared, for many more.

  "You came close to killing us tonight in the lane," the Englishman said very serenely in his heavily accented Spanish, addressing himself more to Guadalmedina than to Alatriste.

  "I regret what happened," the captain replied evenly, with a nod. "But we are not all privileged to do as we will with our swords."

  The Englishman stared at him a few instants longer. Scorn was apparent in his blue eyes; all the surprise and spontaneity of the first moments after the struggle in the lane had vanished. He had had time to think things over, and the recollection of having found himself at the mercy of an unknown swordsman wounded his self-esteem. Thence the newly emerged arrogance, which Alatriste had not so much as glimpsed when they crossed blades earlier in the lantern light.

  "I believe we are even," Buckingham said after a moment. And turning abruptly, he began to put on his gloves.

  Beside him, the younger Englishman, the purported John Smith, his brow clear, white, and noble, his features finely chiseled, stood in silence. Despite the traveling clothes, the delicate hands and elegant stance betrayed from afar that he was a young man of distinguished family. Beneath his smooth mustache the captain glimpsed the suggestion of a smile. Alatriste nodded again and was about to leave, when the still-unidentified man spoke a few words in his language that made his companion turn toward him. Out of the corner of his eye, Alatriste saw Guadalmedina smile: in addition to French and Latin, he spoke the heretics' tongue.

  "My friend says that he owes you his life." George Villiers appeared uncomfortable. As far as he was concerned, the conversation was clearly closed, but grudgingly he translated the younger man's words. "He says that the last thrust from the man in black would have been lethal."

  "Possibly." Alatriste, too, allowed himself a slight smile. "We all were blessed tonight, I believe."

  The Englishman finished fitting on his gloves as he listened carefully to what his companion told him.

  "My friend would like to know what it was that made you reconsider and change sides."

  "I have not changed sides," said Alatriste. "I am always on my own. I hunt alone."

  As his friend translated, the younger man studied the captain thoughtfully. Suddenly, he seemed more mature and more authoritative than his companion. The captain had observed that even Guadalmedina deferred to him more than he did to Buckingham. Then the younger man spoke again, and his companion protested in their language, as if he did not agree that he should translate those last words. But his friend insisted, with a tone of authority that Alatriste had not heard from him before.

  "The gentleman says," Buckingham translated, unwillingly, in his broken Spanish, "that it does not matter who you are or what your office may be, only that you acted nobly when you saved him from being killed like a common dog, a victim of treachery. He says that despite everything, he considers himself in your debt and wants you to know... He says ..." The translator hesitated a moment and exchanged a worried glance with Guadalmedina before he continued. "He says that tomorrow all Europe will know that the son and heir of King James of England is in Madrid with the sole escort and company of his friend the Marquis of Buckingham.... And he says that though for reasons of state it is impossible to publish what happened tonight, he, Charles, Prince of Wales, future King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, will never forget that a man named Diego Alatriste could have killed him, but chose not to."

  VI. THE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES

  The next morning Madrid awakened to the incredible news. Charles Stuart, cub of the English lion, impatient with the pace of matrimonial negotiations with the Infanta dona Maria, sister of our King Philip the Fourth, had with his friend Buckingham conceived this extraordinary and preposterous project of traveling to Madrid, incognito, to meet his future bride. In so doing, he hoped to transform the cold diplomatic exchanges that had been languishing for months in the chancelleries into a novel of chivalric love.

  The marriage between the Anglican prince and the Catholic princess had at this point become a complicated imbroglio in which ambassadors, diplomats, ministers, foreign governments, and even His Holiness the Roman Pope were caught up. The pope would have to authorize the union and was, of course, angling for the largest slice of this tasty pie. So, impatient that no one was flushing his partridge—or whatever those accursed English hunt—the Prince of Wales, seconded by Buckingham, had with his boyish imagination devised a plan to hasten negotiations. Between them they had plotted, confident that traveling to Spain without notice or protocol would immediately conquer the Infanta, and they would carry her off to England before the astonished gaze of all of Europe, and with the applause and approval of the Spanish and English peoples.

  That, more or less, was the heart of the matter. Once King James's initial resistance had been overcome, he gave both youths his benediction and authorized them to set out. Though the risk of his son's undertaking was great—an accident, failure, or a Spanish rebuff would put England's honor on the line—the advantages of achieving a happy ending balanced the risk. First of all, to have the monarch of the nation that was still the most powerful in the world as brother-in-law to his heir was not a small thing. In addition, the marriage, desired by the English court but received more coolly by the Conde de Olivares and the ultra-Catholic counselors of the King of Spain, would put an end to the old enmity between the two nations. Consider, Your Mercies, that barely thirty years had gone by since the defeat of the Invincible Armada; and you know how that went, with cannon shot here and the briny deep there. Yes, the Devil takes all, in that fatal arm-wrestling contest between our good King Don Philip the Second and that redheaded harpy named Elizabeth of England, harborer of Protestants, bastards, and pirates, and better known as the Virgin Queen, though be damned if it is possible to imagine her Virgin anything.

  The fact is that a wedding between the young heretic and our infanta—who was no Venus but was not all that bad, if you go by how Diego Velazquez painted her a little later, young and blonde, a lady... with that very Hapsburg lip, of course—would peacefully open the ports of commerce in the West Indies to England, resolving the burning problem of the Palatinate in favor of. the British. That is a story I do not choose to go into here, because that is what history tomes are for.

  So that is how the cards had been dealt the night that I was sleeping like a dormouse on my pallet in Calle del Arcabuz, unaware of what was brewing, while Captain Alatriste, with one hand on the grip of his pistol, and his sword within reach of the other, spent sleepless hours in a servant's room in the Conde de Guadalmedina's mansion. As for Charles Stuart and Buckingham, they lodged in considerably greater comfort, and with every honor, in the home of the English ambassador. The following morning, when the news had spread and while the counselors of our lord and king, with the Conde de Olivares at their head, attempted to seek a way out of the diplomatic crisis, the people of Madrid gathered en masse before the House of Seven Chimneys to cheer the daring traveler.

  Charles Stuart was young, ardent, and optimistic. He had recently turned twenty-two, and, with that aplomb the young have in copious supply, he was as sure of the seductiveness of his gesture as he was of the love of an infanta whom he had never met. He was similarly sure, counting on our reputation for being gentlemanly and hospitable, that the Spanis
h, along with his lady, would be conquered by such a gallant gesture. And in that he was correct.

  Yes, if the nearly half-century reign of our good and ineffective monarch Don Philip the Fourth, mistakenly called the Great—all chivalry and hospitality, mass on holidays, parading around with splendor and sword and empty belly—had filled Spain's coffers and put pikemen in Flanders, it is also true that I, my captain Alatriste, the Spanish in general, and poor Spain in all its kingdoms had danced to a different tune. And that infamous period was called the Siglo de Oro? What Golden Age, eh? The truth is that those of us who lived and suffered through it saw little gold and barely enough silver. Sterile sacrifice, glorious defeats, corruption, rogues, misery, and shame, that we had up to the eyebrows. But then when one goes and looks at a painting by Diego Velazquez, listens to verses by Lope or Calderon, reads a sonnet by Francisco de Quevedo, one says to oneself that perhaps it was all worthwhile.