The Sun Over Breda

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  But when I told you that I have kept my Toledo blade safely put away, I did not tell you the whole truth; in point of fact I unsheathed it some days ago to strike, as one would a servant or a lowlife, a certain servile and talentless poetaster, one Garciposadas, who in a number of villainous verses discredited poor Cervantes—may he reign in glory—alleging that Cervantes wrote the Quijote with his maimed hand, that it was an insignificant work of little substance; poorly written prose with little to claim it as literature, and that many people read it speaks only of the tastes of common people. He vowed that the book affords little benefit and that tomorrow no one will remember it. This knave, whose pen spews foul venom, is a bosom friend of that sodomite Góngora, which says it all.

  One night, when I was more inclined to philosophize with my wine than waste time on swine, I met the varlet himself at the door of the Longinos tavern, the famous gathering place for Góngora’s followers, the bulwark of resplendence, tricliniums, purplessences, and umbrageous waves of undulating sea. He was accompanied by two sycophants who would grovel to carry his wine: the bachiller Echevarría and the licenciado Ernesto Ayala, schooled reprobates—the latter grander than the first—who piss bile and maintain that the only authentic poetry is the gibberish, that is the Góngoberish, that no one but the select can appreciate. That select few being, of course, themselves and their companions. These coxcombs spend their lives belittling what others write, though they are incapable of stringing together fourteen lines to make a sonnet themselves. I was there with the Duque de Medinaceli and a number of young masked caballeros, all of them from the brotherhood of San Martín de Valdeiglesias, and we spent a happy while trimming the ears of those scoundrels (who, if truth be known, suffered no more than a few scratches), until the catchpoles arrived to impose peace, and we departed, and that was the end of that.

  Here’s a truth, speaking as we were of lowlife. The news about the royal secretary, Luis de Alquézar, the man you so deeply admire, is that he continues to hold a privileged position in the palace, occupying himself with ever more important affairs of state, and that he, like everyone at court, is amassing a fortune at an outrageously rapid rate. As you know, he has a niece who by now is a very beautiful girl and is waiting upon the queen as one of her meninas. In regard to the uncle, it is fortunate that you find yourself at some distance; upon your return from Flanders you must be on your guard against him. One never knows how far the poison spit by serpents will reach.

  And since I am speaking of serpents, I must tell Y.M. that some weeks ago I thought I saw that Italian with whom, I believe, you have unfinished business. I happened upon him in front of Lucio’s hostelry on Cava Baja, and, if it was truly he, he seemed to be enjoying excellent health. Which causes me to reflect that he is recovering remarkably well from your most recent conversations. He looked at me for an instant as if he recognized me and then went off down the street without a word. A sinister individual, one might say in passing, dressed in black from head to toe, with that pitted face and his enormous sword hanging from his belt. Someone to whom I discreetly mentioned the encounter told me that he is the leader of a small band of thugs and ruffians Alquézar keeps on a fixed wage, and who act as his evangelists in sinister assaults. This is a business, I venture, that Your Mercy will have to face one day—one way or another—since he who leaves the offender alive also leaves alivehis vengeance.

  I continue to be a faithful patron of the Tavern of the Turk, where your friends charge me with wishing you well, and I send effusive greetings from Caridad la Lebrijana, who, from what is said—and I have no proof to say it is a lie—feels your absence and reserves for you your old room on Calle del Arcabuz. She is still in good health, one might almost say in full bloom, which is not inconsequential. Martín Saldaña is convalescing from a nocturnal conflict with some ruffians who were attempting to gain refuge in San Ginés. He received a wound from one of their swords but will certainly recover. It is said that he killed three.

  I do not wish to rob you of more time. I ask only that you transmit my affection to young Íñigo, who by now must be a fine young lad and gallant emulator of Mars, having as he has Y.M. to act as his spiritual guide, in the manner of Virgil and Achilles. Recall to him, if you so please, my sonnet on youth and prudence, adding, again if it please you, these other verses with which I am still wrestling:

  To the soldier, wounds are but misery,

  adding nothing to his true fame,

  nor does serving add glory to his name:

  naught but a chimera to warm his reverie….

  Although, what can I say about these things, esteemed captain, that Y.M. does not recognize to the fullest extent.

  May God keep you in his care always, my friend.

  Yours,

  Fran. de Quevedo Villegas

  P.S. You are sorely missed on the steps of San Felipe and at performances of Lope’s plays. I also forgot to tell you that I received a letter from a certain lad whom you may remember, the last of an unfortunate family. Apparently, after attending, in his way, to unfinished matters in Madrid, he was able to make his way to the Indies under an assumed name. I imagined that you might be pleased to hear that news.

  3. THE MUTINY

  Later, after the bull had bolted from the pen, there was great tattle and prattling about whether anyone had seen it coming, but the pure truth is that no one did anything to prevent it. The spark that set everything off was not the Flanders winter, which was not especially severe that year. There was no frost or snow, although the rains were a major hardship aggravated by the lack of food, the diminished population in the villages, and our responsibilities around Breda. But those things all come with the profession, and Spanish troops could endure the travails of war with patience. Wages, however, were a different matter. Many veterans had known poverty following their discharge and the reforms brought about by the Twelve Years’ Truce with the Dutch; they knew in their bones that service in the name of our lord and king demanded a high price when it came to dying and offered little reward when it came to surviving. And I have already noted on this subject that more than a few soldiers, whether they were old, mutilated, or with long campaign records stashed in the tubular containers they carried, had to beg in the streets and squares of our mean-spirited Spain, where again and again the same people amassed wealth while those who had given their health, blood, and life to preserve the true religion, the estates, and the wealth of our monarch remained buried and forgotten. There was hunger in Europe, in Spain, and in the military. The tercios had been waging war against the entire world for a long century and were beginning to not know precisely why, whether it was to defend indulgences or to enable the Court of Madrid to continue believing, amidst its balls and soirées, that it still ruled the world.

  These men no longer had even the comfort of considering themselves professional because they weren’t being paid, and there is nothing like hunger to undercut discipline and conscience. So the matter of arrears complicated the situation in Flanders; for if that winter some tercios, including those of allied nations, twice received half their wages, the Cartagena tercio never saw so much as an escudo. The reasons for that are not within my ken, although at the time it was attributed to bad administration of the finances of our colonel, don Pedro de la Daga, and to some obscure affair of lost or appropriated monies. The reality is that several of the fifteen Spanish, Italian, Burgundian, Walloon, and German tercios maintaining the tight circle around Breda under the direct supervision of don Ambrosio Spínola had some incentive, some hope, but ours, scattered in small advance postings outside the city, counted itself among the troops placed on a long financial fast by the king. It was creating a dangerous atmosphere, for as Lope wrote in El asalto de Mastrique (“The Attack on Maastricht”):

  As long as a man is not yet dead

  always give him drink and bread;

  is there naught but plodding on

  endlessly, with all hope gone?

  I have honored that tatte
red banner,

  But no man should suffer in this manner,

  So, for God or king, hear what I say,

  I’ll not go hungry another day!

  Add to that the fact that our deployment along the banks of the Ooster canal was in the closest position to the enemy, and therefore the most vulnerable to attack. We knew that Maurice of Nassau, general of the rebellious estates, was raising an army to come to the aid of Breda, within which another Nassau, Justin, was holding out with forty-seven companies of Hollanders, French, and English. These latter nations were, as Your Mercies are aware, always right in the thick of things when the opportunity arose to dip their bread in our stewpot. Indisputable was the fact that the army of the Catholic king was walking on the edge of a very sharp sword, twelve hours’ march from the nearest loyal cities, while the Dutch were but three or four hours from theirs. The Cartagena tercios’ orders were to thwart every attack that sought to approach our troops from the rear, thus assuring that our comrades entrenched around Breda would have time to prepare for any onslaught and not be forced to withdraw in shame or be drawn into an unequal battle. That placed a few squads in the scattered alignment that, in military jargon, was called the centinela perdida (the assignment of “forlorn hope”), advance units whose mission was to sound the call to arms but whose chances of surviving were summed up nicely by the pessimistic phrase in the line of duty. Captain Bragado’s bandera had been chosen for that task, as they were long-suffering, experienced in the misery of war, and capable—with or without leaders or officers—of fighting on a small stretch of land when the odds were stacked against them. But perhaps too much was riding on the patience of a few, and I must, in all justice, say that Colonel don Pedro de la Daga, maliciously called Jiñalasoga, was the one who precipitated the conflict with his imperious behavior…highly improper in a man well born and commander of a Spanish tercio.

  I well remember that on that fateful day there was some sun, though it was Dutch sun, and that I was busy making the most of it. I was sitting on a stone bench near the gate of the house and reading, with great pleasure and benefit, a book Captain Alatriste used to lend me so that I could practice. It was a worn first edition, with countless signs of mold and rough treatment, of the first part of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. It had been printed in Madrid during the fifth year of the century—only six years before I was born—by Juan de la Cuesta. It was a wondrous book by the good don Miguel de Cervantes, who was an inspired genius and ill-starred compatriot. Had he been born English, or one of those accursed Frenchies, the cock would have crowed a different tune for this illustrious one-armed man during his lifetime, and not just to give him posthumous glory, a fate that a begrudging nation like ours tends to reserve for good and decent people, especially in the best of cases. I was fascinated by the book, its adventures and happenings, and moved by the sublime madness of the last caballero andante, the gallant Don Quijote, and also by the knowledge—Diego Alatriste had apprised me of this—that during the most exalted moments the centuries had ever seen, when galleys laden with Spanish infantrymen confronted the fearsome Turkish armada in the Gulf of Lepanto, one of the valiant men who fought with sword in hand that day had been don Miguel, a poor and loyal soldier of his country, of his God, and of his king, as Diego Alatriste and my father later became, and as I myself proposed to be.

  I was that morning, as I was saying, reading in the sunshine and pausing from time to time to consider some of the meaty arguments proposed. I, too, had my Dulcinea, as perhaps some of Your Mercies may recall, although my travails of love came not from the disdain of the mistress of my heart but from her perfidy, a circumstance of which I have previously given account when narrating earlier adventures. But even though I had seen myself on the verge of sacrificing honor and life in that sweet trap—the memory of a certain vile talisman sears my memory—I could not forget the vision of blond corkscrew curls and eyes as blue as the sky over Madrid or of a smile identical to the devil’s when, through Eve’s intercession, he tempted Adam to sink his teeth into the fabled apple. The object of my concerns, I calculated, must by now be about thirteen or fourteen years old, and when I imagined her at court participating in soirées and flirtatious carriage rides, surrounded by pages and handsome youths and dandies, I felt for the first time the black scourge of jealousy. Not even my youth, ever more vigorous, or the portents and perils of Flanders, or the nearby presence of the army of vivandières and trulls who followed the soldiers, or the Flemish women themselves—to whom, by my faith, we Spaniards were not always as hostile as we were to their fathers, brothers, and husbands—could make me forget Angélica de Alquézar.

  I was mulling over these thoughts when a variety of sounds and commotion drew me from my reading. A general muster of the tercio had been issued, and soldiers were running hither and yon collecting weapons and appurtenances. The colonel had summoned the troops to a flat area just outside Oudkerk, which town we had taken by force some time back and turned into the principal quarters of the Spanish garrison northwest of Breda. My comrade, Jaime Correas, who showed up with the men from Lieutenant Coto’s squad, told me as we joined the others on the way to the appointed location, about a mile from Oudkerk, that the review of the troops had been ordered overnight, called to resolve some very ugly questions of discipline involving a confrontation between soldiers and officers the previous day. This was the rumor circulating among the troops and the mochileros as we walked along the dike toward the nearby plain. The subject was being discussed from every viewpoint, and commands occasionally shouted by the sergeants were not enough to quiet the men.

  Jaime, walking beside me, was carrying two short pikes, a brass helmet weighing twenty pounds, and a musket from the squad he served. I myself had Diego Alatriste’s and Mendieta’s harquebuses, a calfskin pack stuffed to the top, and several flasks of powder. Jaime was bringing me up to date as we walked along. It seems that in light of the need to fortify Oudkerk with bastions and trenches, regular soldiers had been asked to do the job, digging sod and carrying fascines (bundles of sticks to aid fortification) for the battlements, with the promise of pay that would remedy the poverty in which, as I have said, they all found themselves because of wages owed and scarcity of provisions. Put a different way, wages to which they were entitled but had not received could be earned a second time by those willing to put shoulder to the wheel, and at the end of each day’s labor they would receive the agreed-upon stipend. Many in the tercio accepted this means of improving their situation, but some spoke up, saying that if there was good coin to be had, their back pay should come first and then the fortifications and that they should not have to work to earn what was already owed them by rights. They said they would rather go without than resort to this remedy, forcing hunger to compete so vilely with honor, and that an hidalgo—for every soldier called himself that—deserved more and that it was better to die of misery and maintain their good name than to owe their well-being to spades and hoes.

  In the midst of all this commotion, groups of men had been milling around and trading words amongst themselves, when a sergeant from a certain company mistreated a harquebusier from the bandera of Captain Torralba. This soldier and a comrade, short-tempered despite recognizing by his halberd that the aggressor was a sergeant, jumped into the fire, and, wielding their swords a little too freely, they gravely wounded their offender, only a miracle preventing them from dispatching him to his reward. So it was expected that the colonel would make a public example of the guilty parties and that, with the exception of those on watch, he wanted the entire tercio to witness it.

  In these and related discussions we mochileros made our way along with the troops, and even in the squad of Diego Alatriste I heard different views about the affair: Curro Garrote being the most stirred up and, as usual, Sebastián Copons the most indifferent. From time to time I shot uneasy looks at my master to see if I could read his opinion, but he was walking along without a word, as if he heard nothing: sword and dagg
er in his belt, and the tail of his short cape swinging to the rhythm of his steps. He was tight-lipped when anyone spoke to him, and his face was unreadable beneath the wide brim of his hat.

  “Hang them!” said don Pedro de la Daga.

  In the eerie silence of the esplanade, the colonel’s voice sounded sharp and cold. The companies were aligned to form three sides of a great rectangle with the banner of each in the center: pikemen and coseletes (soldiers so called because of the armor they wore) lining the sides and detachments of harquebusiers at each corner. The twelve hundred soldiers of the tercio were so quiet and motionless that a botfly could have been heard among the rows. Under different circumstances it would have been a beautiful sight: all those men lined up with such precision, not sumptuously dressed, it is true—their clothing was covered with patches that at times were no more than rags, and they were even more poorly shod—but their weapons were oiled in accord with regulations, and their breastplates, helmets, pike heads, and harquebus barrels had been conscientiously cleaned and polished. Mucrone corusco, “with shining sword,” the chaplain of the tercio, Padre Salanueva, would undoubtedly have said, had he been sober. Every man was wearing or, rather, had sewed onto his doublet or buffcoat, as I had, the faded aspa, the crimson cross of Saint Andrew, also known as the cross of Burgundy, an insignia that allowed Spaniards to recognize a fellow soldier in combat. And on the fourth side of the rectangle, next to the flag of the tercio itself, surrounded by his principal officers and the six German halberdiers of his personal guard, was don Pedro de la Daga on horseback, his proud head bare, lace collar white against his tooled cuirass, cuisses of good Milanese steel, damascened sword at his side, antelope gloves, right hand on his hip and reins in his left.