The Sun Over Breda

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  “Ik geef mij over!” someone wailed in the shadows.

  That was out of place, for everyone knew that no prisoners were taken in the caponnieres, just as the Spaniards, when dealt a bad hand, expected no quarter. The voice soon gurgled in a death rattle when one of the attackers, guided by sound, reached the heretic and silenced him with his dagger. Alatriste heard more sounds of fighting and paused to listen, motionless and alert. There were two more shots, and in their flash, he saw Copons close by, locked in a struggle with a Hollander, rolling across the ground. Then he heard the Olivares brothers calling each other in low voices. Copons and the Dutchman were not making any noise, and for an instant the captain wondered who was alive and who not.

  “Sebastián!” he whispered.

  Copons answered with a grunt, clarifying any doubt. Now there was almost no sound except for a low moan here and there, some ragged breathing, and the scraping sound of men crawling across the tunnel floor. Alatriste moved forward again on his knees, one hand held before him, groping in the darkness, the other tense and ready by his side, clutching his dagger. The last sputter of the lantern showed that the mouth of the tunnel leading to the enemy trenches was filled with rubble and splintered wood. A body lay sprawled there, motionless, and after striking twice with his dagger to be sure, the Captain crawled over it toward the tunnel. He paused a few instants, listening. There was nothing but silence on the other side, but he caught an odor.

  “Sulfur!” he yelled.

  The toxic cloud moved slowly down the tunnel, undoubtedly propelled by bellows the Dutch were pumping in order to flood the passage with a haze of burnt straw, tar, and sulfur. They obviously did not have the welfare of any compatriots still alive in mind, or perhaps by that point they were convinced that no one could have survived. The current of air favored their operation, and in less time than it takes to recite an Our Father, the noxious smoke would have poisoned the air. With a sudden sense of urgency, Alatriste scrabbled back through the rubble and bodies, bumped into the comrades clogging the mouth of the caponniere, and finally, after what seemed like years, was again pulling his body rapidly through fallen earth and remains from The Cemetery. The grunts and curses of someone he thought was Garrote pressed him from behind. The captain passed beneath the opening in the ceiling of the caponniere, desperately gasped air from outside, and then continued along the tight passageway, lips pressed and breath held, until over the head of the comrade preceding him he saw light ahead, gradually growing brighter. At last he emerged into the large tunnel, which had been abandoned by the German sappers, and then fell into the Spanish trench. He ripped the kerchief from his mouth and frantically gulped air, then used the cloth to scrub the sweat and dirt from his face. All around him, like cadavers restored to life, were the wan, grimy faces of his comrades, exhausted and blinded by the light. Finally, once his eyes had adjusted, he saw Captain Bragado waiting with the German sappers and the rest of the group.

  “Is everyone here?” Bragado asked.

  Rivas and one of the Olivares brothers were missing. Pablo, the younger one, his hair and beard no longer black but gray from powder and dirt, started toward the tunnel to look for his brother but was held back by Garrote and Mendieta. The Dutch, enraged by this turn of events, were now sending heavy fire our way from the other side, and musket balls whizzed past heads and bounced off the gabion baskets of the trench.

  “Well, we really fucked them,” said Mendieta.

  There was no triumph in his tone, only profound weariness. He still had his spade in his hand, covered with clumps of blood and earth. Copons lay on the ground beside Alatriste, breathing with difficulty, his face covered with a shining mask of sweat and clay.

  “Whoresons!” the younger of the Olivares brothers shouted. “Heretic sons of beggars’ bawds, may you roast in hell!”

  His imprecations ceased as Rivas’s head emerged from the mouth of the tunnel; he was dragging the other Olivares, half suffocated but still alive. The Galician’s blue eyes were bloodshot.

  “God a’ mercy.”

  His blond hair was smoking with sulfur. He clawed the kerchief from his face, coughing up dirt.

  “Thanks be to God,” he said, filling his lungs with fresh air.

  One of the Germans brought a small wineskin of water, and the men drank greedily, one after the other.

  “Even if it were ass’s piss,” Garrote muttered, spilling water down his chin and chest.

  Leaning against the trench wall and feeling Bragado’s eyes on him, Alatriste cleaned the dirt and blood from his vizcaína.

  “How is the tunnel?” the officer asked finally.

  “Clean as this dagger.”

  Without another word Alatriste sheathed the weapon. Then he removed the primer charge from the pistol he had not needed to use.

  “Thanks be to God,” Rivas repeated over and over, crossing himself. His blue eyes wept black earth.

  Alatriste said nothing aloud, but to himself he said, “Sometimes God seems to have had enough.” Then, sickened with pain and blood, he gazed toward the other side and rested.

  8. ATTACK BY NIGHT

  In this way the month of April went by, rainy days alternating with clear days. The grass grew greener in the fields and trenches, and on the graves of the dead. Our cannon battered the walls of Breda; the sapping of mines and countermines continued; and every good Christian made use of his harquebus, skirmishing from trench to trench, with an assault from us and a sortie from the Dutch occasionally breaking the monotony of the siege. It was about that time that we began to hear news of terrible shortages, a true famine suffered by the besieged, although those of us doing the besieging were worse off than they. But with this difference: They had been brought up in fertile lands, with rivers and fields and cities regaled by Fortune; we Spaniards had for centuries been watering ours with blood and sweat just to get a scrap of bread. So, since our enemies were fashioned more for pleasure rather than the lack of sustenance, some by nature and others by custom, a number of the English and French in Breda began to abandon their units and come over to our camp, telling us that behind those walls the deaths now numbered some five thousand, including common folk, burghers, and military. From time to time the dawn would see hanging before the walls of the city Dutch spies who had been attempting to deliver increasingly desperate letters between the head of the garrison, Justin of Nassau, and his relative Maurice, who was only a few leagues away and unyielding in his determination to rescue the stronghold by breaking a siege that was now nearing a year in length.

  In those days, too, came news of a dike that the same Maurice of Nassau was constructing near Sevenberge, two hours’ march from Breda, with the aim of diverting the waters of the Merck toward our camp in order, with the aid of the tides, to flood the Spanish barracks and trenches. Troops and provisions could also be brought to the city by boat. It was a grand, ambitious, and very timely enterprise. Also grand was the number of sappers and boatmen engaged in cutting sod and fascines for fortifications and in transporting stone, trees, and timber for its construction. They had already dug three anchorages lined with rubblework and were progressing from both sides, containing the mud with large wood retaining walls and securing the locks with pontoons and palisades. This news was a great worry to our General Spínola, who was seeking, without finding, an efficient way to prevent us waking in water up to our necks. On this point, it was said by way of jest, we would have to send men from the German tercios to thwart Nassau’s project, because they were a nation that could lend their basic skills to the purpose:

  He set that crew of Germans down

  and then he said to them,

  “The dike that you see there must go

  or we will all be drowned.”

  And I am here to let you know

  that as water was not their drink,

  that dike vanished from his sight

  ’ere he’d had time to blink.

  It was also during those days that Captain Alatriste rece
ived an order to present himself in the tent of Colonel don Pedro de la Daga. He went there late in the afternoon, as the sun was setting over the flat landscape, bathing the banks of the dikes in a rosy glow and silhouetting the windmills and trees that stretched toward the swamps in the northwest. Alatriste had smartened himself up as much as he was able: His buffcoat hid his mended shirt; his weapons were burnished to an even brighter sheen; and his belts had been liberally treated with tallow. He entered the tent bareheaded, with his battered hat in one hand and the other resting on the pommel of his sword. He stood there, erect, not opening his mouth until don Pedro de la Daga, who was speaking with other officers, among them Captain Bragado, decided to grant him his attention.

  “So here he is,” said the colonel.

  Alatriste showed neither uneasiness nor curiosity at the unusual summons, though his attentive eyes did not miss the discreet, calming smile that Bragado sent him from behind the colonel’s back. There were four other officers in the tent, all of whom he knew by sight: don Hernán Torralba, captain of another of the banderas; Sergeant-Major Idiáquez; and two guzmanes, the two caballeros attached to de la Daga’s military staff. Aristocrats and well-bred hidalgos often served without pay in the tercios for love of glory or, which was more common, to establish a reputation before returning to Spain to enjoy the sinecures that would be theirs through influence, friendships, and family. All the men were holding crystal wine goblets that had been filled from bottles on a table covered in books and maps. Alatriste had not seen a crystal goblet since the sacking of Oudkerk. A meeting of shepherds and wine, he said to himself, means one dead sheep.

  “Would you care for a little, señor?”

  The twist of Jiñalasoga’s lips was meant to be amiable as he indicated the bottles and goblets with a casual sweep of his hand.

  “It is good Pedro Ximénez wine,” he added. “We’ve just received it from Málaga.”

  Alatriste swallowed hard, hoping that no one would notice. At noon in the trenches he and his comrades had feasted on a few sips of dirty water and bread seasoned with turnip oil. For that reason, he sighed: each to his own. It was in the long run more comfortable to keep one’s distance from one’s superiors, just as they were more comfortable keeping theirs from their inferiors.

  “With Your Mercy’s leave,” he said after a moment’s thought, “I will have some another time.”

  He had slightly adjusted his stance while speaking, as if to stand at attention, attempting to do so with the proper respect. Even so, the colonel arched an eyebrow and after an instant turned his back to him, ignoring him as if he were preoccupied with the maps on the table. The guzmanes looked Alatriste up and down with curiosity. As for Carmelo Bragado, who was standing in the background beside Captain Torralba, his smile had grown a little broader, but it disappeared when Sergeant-Major Idiáquez took center stage. Ramiro Idiáquez was a veteran with a gray mustache and white hair, which he wore cut very short. An old injury to his nose made it look as if it were slit at the tip, a reminder of the attack and sacking of Calais at the end of the old century, in the days of our good king Philip the Second.

  “We have received a challenge,” he said with the brusqueness he used for giving orders and everything else. “Tomorrow morning. Five against five by the Den Bosch gate.”

  In those days such events were a normal part of an officer’s duties. Not satisfied with the normal ebb and flow of the war, the antagonists sometimes took things to a personal level, with braggadocio and rodomontades in which the honor of nations and flags was at stake. Even the great Emperor Charles V, to the enjoyment of all Europe, had challenged his enemy Francis I of France to one-on-one combat; the Frenchman, however, and after a great deal of thought, had declined the offer. In the end, history had called in the French toad’s chips when in Pavia he saw his troops demolished, the flower of his nobility annihilated, and he himself lying flat on the ground with the sword of Juan de Urbieta, a citizen of Hernani, resting on his royal gullet.

  Then came a brief silence. Alatriste was impassive, hoping that someone would say something more. In the end, it was one of the guzmanes who spoke.

  “Yesterday, two vain, self-satisfied Dutch caballeros from Breda came out to deliver the message. Apparently one of our harquebusiers killed a man of some importance in the trenches of the stronghold. They asked for one hour on open ground, five against five, each man carrying two pistols and a sword. Of course, the gauntlet was picked up.”

  “Of course!” the second guzmán repeated.

  “Men from Campo Látaro’s Italian tercio asked to participate, but it has been decided that we should all be Spanish.”

  “Only natural,” put in the other.

  Alatriste examined them very slowly. The first to have spoken appeared to be about thirty. He was wearing clothing that heralded his social position, and the baldric of his Toledo sword was of good Moroccan leather tooled in gold. For some reason, despite the war, he had elected to wear his mustache tightly curled. He was disagreeable and haughty. The second man, broader and shorter, was also younger. He affected a slightly Italian style, with a rich collar of Brussels lace and a short velvet doublet with sleeves slashed in satin. The identifying red band both men wore was edged with gold tassels, and their fine leather boots with spurs were very different from the boots Alatriste was wearing at that moment: His were wrapped in rags to keep his toes from peeping out. He could imagine those two enjoying their intimate acquaintance with the colonel, who in turn would, through them, strengthen his connections in Brussels and Madrid, all of them laughing and exchanging thank-yous and Your Mercies. Dogs trotting on the same leash. He knew the name of the first only by reputation: don Carlos del Arco, a native of Burgos and son of a marqués, or son of a something. Alatriste had twice seen him fight, and he was judged to be courageous.

  “Don Luis de Bobadilla and I make two,” don Carlos continued. “And we will need an additional three men with livers, not lilies, so we will be on even terms.”

  “In truth we are lacking only one,” Sergeant-Major Idiáquez corrected. “To accompany these caballeros I have already chosen Pedro Martín, a brave man from the bandera of Captain Gómez Coloma. And the fourth will probably be Eguiluz, from don Hernán Torralba’s company.”

  “A good menu for serving Nassau a bad meal,” the guzmán concluded.

  Alatriste digested all this in silence. He knew Martín and Eguiluz, both veteran soldiers who could be trusted when it came to shaking hands with the Dutch, or with anyone else for that matter. Neither would make a bad partner at the fiesta.

  “You will be the fifth,” said don Carlos del Arco.

  Unblinking, with his hat in one hand and the other on his sword, Alatriste frowned. He did not care for the dandy’s tone or the way he considered Alatriste’s role a fait accompli, especially since this guzmán was not exactly an officer. Nor did he like the gold tassels on his red band or the petulant air of a man who has an endless supply of gold coins in his pouch and a father in Burgos who is a marqués. Finally, he did not like the fact that his commander, Captain Bragado, was standing there without a word to say for himself. Bragado was a good military man, and he knew how to combine those skills with delicate diplomacy, which had stood him in good stead during his career, but Diego Alatriste y Tenorio was not the kind of man to welcome orders from arrogant fops, however daring they might be and however much they drank his colonel’s wine from crystal goblets. All of which caused the affirmative answer he was about to give to linger a moment on his lips. That hesitation was misinterpreted by del Arco.

  “Of course,” he said with a snort of disdain, “if you consider the matter too dangerous…”

  He left his words hanging in the air and looked around as a smirk appeared on his companion’s face. Ignoring the warning glances Captain Bragado was sending his way, Alatriste took his hand from his sword and fingered his mustache with supreme calm. It was a way as good as any to contain the anger surging from his stomach to his ches
t, causing his blood to pound slowly, regularly, in his temples. He fixed his icy gaze on one of the caballeros and then on the other for a long moment, so long that the colonel, who had been standing all that time with his back turned, as if none of this concerned him, swung around to observe him. But Alatriste was already addressing Carmelo Bragado.

  “I assume that this is your order, mi capitán.”

  Bragado slowly put his hand to the back of his neck, rubbing it without answering, and then looked toward Sergeant-Major Idiáquez, whose furious eyes were shooting daggers at the two guzmanes. But then don Pedro de la Daga himself replied.

  “There are no orders in questions of honor,” he said insolently. “Each man is answerable for his reputation and his shame.”

  When he heard that, Alatriste paled, and his right hand slowly descended toward the hilt of his blade. The look Bragado sent him was now imploring: To show even an inch of blade would mean the gallows. But Alatriste was thinking of something more than an inch. In fact, he was coolly calculating how much time he would need to thrust the sword through the colonel first and then quickly turn to the caballeros. Perhaps he would have time to take one of them, preferably Carlos del Arco, before Idiáquez and Bragado killed him like a dog.

  The sergeant-major cleared his throat, visibly perturbed. He was the only person who, because of his rank and privileges in the tercio, could contradict Jiñalasoga. He had also known Diego Alatriste some twenty years, ever since that day in Amiens when, one being a boy and the other a youth whose mustache was just beginning to grow, they had set out together from the Montrecourt ravelin in the company of Captain don Diego de Villalobos: In four hours they had nailed down the enemy artillery and killed the last of the eight hundred Frenchmen manning the trenches, giving in exchange the lives of seventy comrades. Which was not a bad trade, pardiez: eleven of them for every one of us, if my arithmetic is correct, and a bonus of thirty.