Pirates of the Levant

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  But let us go back to the prosperous, fascinating Naples of my youth, and add to this the restless company of my comrade Jaime Correas. We would hang around convents — like would- be suitors to the nuns — although we spent Fridays and Saturdays with the local roughs down by the harbour, bathing in the sea on hot nights or else visiting any balcony or shuttered window likely to conceal the eyes of some woman willing to be courted. And then there were the taverns — whose sign, in Italy, was a sprig of bay — the gaming dens and the brothels. Although, with regard to the latter, I was as restrained as my companion was unbuttoned; because, whereas Jaime would go with any whore who said 'What lovely eyes you have', I, fearful of the diseases that can afflict both health and purse, would keep out of the way, drinking wine and engaging in polite conversation, restricting myself to more peripheral activities, which, while pleasurable, carried little risk. And because — all credit to Captain Alatriste — I had been brought up to be a discreet and generous lad, and because people prefer a clock that tells the time to one that merely shows it, I was always well thought of in the elegant inns near Chiaia beach, in the bawdyhouses in Via Catalana or the Mandraccio or Chorrillo taverns. The ladies there were fond of me and found my youth and my discretion rather touching; some even occasionally ironed — and starched — my cuffs, collars and shirts. The other fellows who grazed in the same pastures

  all addressed me as 'friend' and 'comrade', for they knew, too that thanks to my experiences at the Captain's side, I was by profession a swordsman, quick to unsheathe both sword and dagger, and light on my feet. That and having money to spend always gives one a good reputation among ruffians, roughnecks, cutthroats and ne'er-do-wells.

  'There's a letter for you,' said Captain Alatriste.

  That morning, when he had finished guard duty in Castel Nuovo, he had passed by Don Francisco's sentry post and picked up the sealed letter bearing my name. It was now lying on the table in our room in the inn of Ana de Osorio, in the Spanish quarter. The Captain was looking at me, saying nothing, only half his face and one tip of his moustache lit from behind as he stood by the window. I went over to the letter slowly, as if approaching enemy territory. I recognised the writing at once. And I swear to God that, despite all the time that had passed, despite the distance, my age and everything that had happened since that intense and terrible night at El Escorial, I experienced an almost imperceptible twinge in the scar on my back, as if I had just felt on it the brush of warm lips after the touch of cold steel. My heart stopped for a second, only to begin again, beating wildly. Finally, I reached out my hand to pick up the letter, and then the Captain turned and looked me straight in the eye. He seemed about to say something, but instead, after a moment, he grabbed his hat and belt and walked straight past me, leaving me alone in the room.

  Senor Don Inigo Balboa Aguirre

  Company of Captain Don Justino Armenta de Medrano

  of the Spanish Infantry in Naples

  My dear soldier,

  It has not proved easy to find you, although, even far from Spain, I am still kept in touch with what goes on there through relatives and acquaintances. That is how I learned that you had returned to the army in the company of that Captain Batistre or El- Triste, and that, not satisfied with slitting the throats of heretics in Flanders, you have now turned your attentions to the Turk, always, of course, in support of our universal monarchy and of the one true religion, which does you credit as a valiant, hard-working gentleman.

  If you think that I am living here in exile, you are quite wrong. New Spain is a novel and exciting place, full of possibilities, and my Uncle Don Luis' name and connections are as useful here as they were at Court; even more so, given that letters take such a long time to come and go. I need say only that his position remains unchanged, indeed he has grown in prestige and fortune, despite the false accusations levelled against him last year, in relation to that incident at El EscoriaL I hope to see him fully rehabilitated in the eyes of the King, our lord, for he still has influential friends and family at Court I have good reason to believe this, too, for we have enough powder for a countermine, as you might say in your soldier's jargon. In Taxco, where I live, we produce the best and most beautiful silver in the world, and a large part of the silver carried on the fleets to Cadiz and Spain passes through my uncle's hands, that is, through mine. As Father Emilio Bocanegra would say — and I'm sure you will remember that saintly man as fondly as I do — the ways of the Lord are unknowable, especially in our Catholic homeland, which is the bulwark of the faith and of so many fine virtues.

  As for you and me, a lot of time has passed and many things have happened since our last encounter, of which I remember every moment and every detail, as, I hope, da you. I have grown within and without, and I would like us to compare such changes at closer quarters; and so I very much hope that we will meet face to face on some not too distant day, when this period of difficulties, voyages and distance is a memory. As you well know, I am good at waiting. Meanwhile, if you still harbour the same feelings for me, I demand an immediate response in your own hand, assuring me that time, distance and the women of Italy and the Levant have not erased from you the marks left by my hands, my lips and my dagger. If not, then damn you, and I wish for you the worst evils in the world, imprisonment in Algiers, a spell on the galleys and impalement by a Turk. However, if you are still faithful to she who has not yet killed you, I swear I will reward you with unimaginable torment and joy.

  As you see, I think I still love you, but don't rely on that or on anything else. You will find out only when we are once more face to face, looking into each other's eyes. Until then, stay alive and avoid any unpleasant mutilations. I have interesting plans for you.

  Good luck, soldier. And when you attack your next Turkish galley, call out my name. It pleases me to think that I, and my name, have been on the lips of a brave man

  Yours,

  Angelica de Alquezar

  After a moment's hesitation, I went out into the street. I found the Captain — doublet unfastened, hat, sword and dagger on a stool beside him — sitting at the door of the inn, watching

  the passers-by. I was holding the letter in my hand and generously held it out to him. He didn't even want to look at it and merely shook his head.

  'The name "Alquezar" has always brought us bad luck,' he said.

  'She's my business,' I replied.

  I saw him shake his head again, distracted. He seemed to be thinking about something else. The inn was on Three Kings Hill, and he had his eyes fixed on the junction of our street with that of San Matteo. In between two miserable shops, one selling coal, coke and kindling and the other tallow candles, some mules, tethered to rings on the wall, were liberally sprinkling the ground with their droppings. The sun was high, and above us the washing hung out to dry cast alternating rectangles of light and shade on to the ground.

  'She wasn't your business alone when you were in the dungeons of the Inquisition or when we boarded the Niklaas- bergen.' The Captain was speaking softly, as if thinking aloud rather than talking to me. 'Nor was she only your business in the cloisters at Minillas or in El Escorial. She implicated friends of ours. People died.'

  'She wasn't the problem. She was used.'

  He turned slowly to face me and then glanced at the letter in my hand. I looked away, embarrassed. Then I folded up the letter and put it in my pocket. Some of the sealing wax had stuck to my nails, like dried blood.

  'I love her,' I said.

  'I heard you say that once in Breda, when you'd received just such a letter from her.'

  'Now I love her more.'

  He said nothing for some time. I leaned one shoulder against the wall. We were watching various people pass by: soldiers, women, kitchen hands, servants and errand boys.

  The whole quarter, built by private individuals in the previous century at the instigation of the Viceroy Don Pedro de Toledo, housed most of the three thousand Spanish soldiers in the Naples regiment, for there was only
room for a few in the barracks. The area was an unlovely, architectural mishmash of a place, but it served its purpose. There were no public edifices, only inns, hostels and tenements with rooms to let, in buildings of four or even five storeys. It was, in short, a vast military base populated by soldiers either just passing through or garrisoned there, and we all lived cheek by jowl. Some were married to Italian women, or to women who had come over from Spain and had children. We lived alongside the locals who rented us lodgings, fed us and, in short, made a living, and not a bad one, from what the military spent. On that day, as on every day, while the Captain and I were talking at the door to the inn, women called to one another from the windows above, old people leaned out to take the air, and loud voices, Spanish and Neapolitan, echoed from inside the houses. Some small ragged boys were shouting in both languages as they pursued a poor, tormented dog up the hill; they had tied a broken jug to its tail and were chasing it and calling it a Jew.

  'There are some women ...' the Captain began, then stopped, frowning, as if he had forgotten the rest of the sentence.

  For some unknown reason, I was irritated. Twelve years ago, in that same Spanish quarter, my former master — with too much wine in his belly and too much anger in his heart — had killed his best friend and marked the face of a woman with a dagger.

  'I don't think you're in a position to give me lessons about women,' I said, raising my voice slightly. 'Especially not here, in Naples.'

  Touche. His green eyes lit up with an ice-cold flash of lightning. Anyone else would have been afraid of that look; I wasn't. He himself had taught me not to be afraid of anything and anyone.

  'Nor in Madrid,' I added, 'with poor Lebrijana crying her eyes out while Maria de Castro ...'

  Now it was my turn to leave a sentence unfinished, uncertain how to continue, for the Captain had slowly got to his feet and was looking at me hard, from very close to, with eyes that were the same colour as the wintry water in the Flanders canals. I brazenly held his gaze, but swallowed hard when I saw him smooth his moustache.

  'Hm,' he said, studying the sword and dagger on the stool beside him. 'I think Sebastian is right,' he went on after a moment. 'You've grown up too fast.'

  He picked up his weapons and buckled them on. I had seen him do this a thousand times, but on this occasion, the clink of steel made my skin prickle. Finally, he donned his broad-brimmed hat, which cast a shadow over his face.

  'You're quite the man now,' he added. 'Capable of raising your voice and, of course, of killing. But capable, too, of dying. Try to remember that when you talk to me about certain things.'

  He continued to fix me with the same cold stare, as if he had just seen me for the first time. And then I did feel afraid.

  The washing festooned along the narrow streets resembled shrouds floating in the darkness. Diego Alatriste left the broad, paved Via Toledo, with torches blazing at every corner, and made his way into the Spanish quarter, whose steep, straight streets rose up the gloomy San Elmo hill. You could just make out the castle above, still vaguely lit by the fading, reddish light from Vesuvius. Having stirred into life in recent days, the volcano was now falling asleep once more. A brief wisp of smoke hovered over the crater, its red glow reflected only faintly by the clouds and on the waters in the bay.

  As soon as he felt safe among the shadows, Captain Alatriste allowed himself to vomit, grunting like a pig. He remained there for a while, leaning his head against the wall and holding his hat in one hand, until the world around him stopped spinning and a bitter clarity of mind replaced the vapours from the wine he had drunk — a lethal mixture of Greco, Mangiaguerra, Latino and Lacrima Christi. This was hardly surprising — he had spent all evening and part of the night alone, going from tavern to tavern, avoiding any comrades he met on that Via Crucis, and only opening his mouth to ask for more wine.

  He looked behind him, towards the brightly lit Via Toledo, in case there should be any witnesses. He had sent the Moor Gurriato away with a flea in his ear, and he would probably now be sleeping in the modest barracks in Monte Calvario. There wasn't a soul in sight, so only the sound of his footsteps accompanied him when he put on his hat again and set off, orienting himself down the dark streets. He crossed Via Sperancella, making sure the hilt of his sword was easily accessible and keeping to the middle of the street to avoid any unfortunate encounters in porches or at corners, and then he continued on until he reached the arches where the street narrowed. Turning right, he walked as far as the small square and church of the Trinita dei Spagnuoli. That area of Naples brought him good memories and bad, but it was the latter that had been stirred into life again that afternoon. Despite the years that had passed, they were still there, fresh and vivid, like mosquitoes refusing to drown in a glass of wine.

  It wasn't just that he had killed a man and scarred a woman's face. It wasn't a matter of remorse or of an ache that could be relieved by going into a church and kneeling down in front of a priest, in the unlikely event that Diego Alatriste would enter a church other than to seek refuge from the Law. He had killed many people during his forty-five years and knew that he would kill many more before the time came when he would have to pay for all his misdemeanours. No, the problem was of quite a different order, and the wine had helped him first to digest it and then to vomit it up. What dogged him was the chilling certainty that every step he took in life, every sword-thrust to left or right, every scrap of money he earned, every drop of blood that spattered his clothes, all formed a kind of damp mist, a smell that clung to his skin like the scent of a fire or a war. The smell of life, of the passing years with no turning back, of the uncertain, hesitant, or resolute steps he took, each one of which determined the steps that would follow. It was the smell of resignation and impotence before an irrevocable destiny. Some men tried to disguise that smell with fantastical perfumes or to ignore it by averting their gaze, while others steadfastly breathed it in, facing it head on, aware that every game, even life and death, had its rules.

  Before he reached the church of San Matteo, Diego Alatriste took the first street on the left. The inn of Ana de Osorio was only a few steps away and was always lit at night by the candles that burned in the three or four wall niches dedicated to the Virgin and to various saints. When he reached the door, he looked up from beneath the brim of his hat at the dark sky between the houses and the lines of washing hung out to dry. Time changes some places and leaves others untouched, he thought, but it always changes your heart. Then he muttered an oath and went slowly up the unlit stairs that creaked beneath his boots. He opened the door to his room, fumbled around for flint and steel, and lit an oil lamp

  hanging from a beam. He unbuckled his belt, threw his weapons on the floor, not caring who he might wake up, then went in search of the demijohn of wine he kept in a corner and quietly cursed again when he found it empty.

  The serenity he had felt at being back in Naples had vanished that afternoon with a brief conversation in the street below and with the realisation, once again, that nobody goes through life unscathed, and that with just a few rash words, a lad of seventeen could become a mirror in which one saw one's own reflection, along with the scars and disquieting memories that can only be avoided by those who have not lived enough. Someone had written that travelling and books led to wisdom. This was true, perhaps, for some men, but in the case of Diego Alatriste they led to a table in a tavern.

  A couple of days later, I found myself involved in a curious incident. I will describe it to you now just to show that, despite the grand airs I put on and everything I had experienced during those years, I was still very much a babe newly weaned.

  I was returning in the small hours from guard duty next to what we called the Alcala tower, near Uovo Castle. Apart from the vague reddish glow in the sky above the volcano and its reflection in the waters of the bay, it was a dark night. As I walked up Santa Lucia, past the church, near the fountains and next to the little chapel there, which was adorned with ex-votos depicting babies,
legs and eyes made from wax and brass, as well as bunches of withered flowers, medallions and almost anything else you care to name, I made out the figure of a woman on her own, her cloak wrapped about her. Being in that place at that hour, I thought, meant that she was either very devout or was craftily setting her nets. Anyway, on the premise that, to a young falcon, all flesh

  is good flesh, I slowed my pace, trying to get a look at her in the dim light of the oil-lamps burning on the altar. She seemed quite a handsome woman, and as I approached, I perceived the rustle of silk and the smell of amber. This, I thought, meant that she was no mere prostitute, and so I showed more interest, trying to catch a glimpse of her face, which was almost hidden by her mantilla. The parts of her I could see were very pleasing.

  'Svergognato anda il bello galante, she said charmingly.

  'I'm not forward at all,' I responded calmly, 'but no man could remain indifferent before such beauty.'

  I was encouraged by her voice, which was young and clear and Italian, not like the voices of so many of our proud compatriots, whether Andalusian or not, who worked in Italy and made out that they were of the highest nobility, yet always addressed potential clients in plain Castilian. I was standing in front of her now but still could not see her face, although her figure, which pleased me greatly, was silhouetted against the glow from the altar. Her mantilla seemed to be made of the finest silk, and from the little I could see of her, I was tempted to buy the whole bale.