He went over to the table and poured himself a little wine. As he did so, he went from the mat to the flagstoned floor, and the cold sent a shiver over his weather-beaten soldier’s skin. He drank, still keeping his eyes on the woman. Hundreds of men of all classes and stations, men of quality and with nice full purses, would have given anything to enjoy her for a few minutes; and yet there he was, sated with her flesh and her mouth. His only fortune was his sword and his only future, oblivion. How odd they are, he thought again, the mechanisms that move the minds of women. Or, at least, the minds of women like her. The killer’s purse, which he had placed on the table without saying a word—doubtless the price of his own life—contained only enough for her to buy herself some fashionable new clogs, a fan, and some ribbons. And yet there he was. And there she was.
“Diego.”
This was spoken in a sleepy murmur. The woman had turned over in bed and was looking at him.
“Come here, my love.”
He put down his glass of wine and went over to her, sitting down on the edge of the bed and placing one hand on her warm flesh. My love, she had said. He didn’t even have enough money to pay for his own funeral—an event he postponed each day with his sword—nor was he an elegant fop, or a gallant, cultivated man, the sort admired by women in the street or at evening parties. My love. He suddenly found himself remembering the last lines of a sonnet by Lope that he had heard that afternoon at the poet’s house:
She loves you, loathes you, treats you well, then ill. Like a leech or surgeon’s knife, she’s double-edged: Sometimes she’ll cure, but sometimes she will kill.
In the moonlight, María de Castro’s eyes looked incredibly beautiful, and it accentuated the dark abyss of her half-open mouth. So what, thought the captain. My love or not my love. My love or someone else’s love. My madness or my sanity. My, your, his heart. That night he was alive, and that was all that counted. He had eyes to see and a mouth to kiss with. And teeth to bite. None of the many sons of bitches who had crossed his path, Turks, heretics, constables, or bullies, had succeeded in stealing this moment from him. He was still breathing, although many had tried to stop him doing so. And now, as if to confirm this, one of her hands was caressing his skin, lingering over each old scar. “My love,” she said again. Don Francisco de Quevedo would doubtless have got a good poem out of this, fitting it all into fourteen perfect hendecasyllables. Captain Alatriste, however, merely smiled to himself. It was good to be alive, at least for a while longer, in a world in which no one gave anything away for nothing, in which everything had to be paid for—before, during, and afterward. “I must have paid something,” he thought. “I don’t know how much or when, but I must have done so if life is rewarding me with the prize of having a woman look at me as she is looking at me now, even if only for a few nights.”
3. THE ALCÁZAR DE LOS AUSTRIAS
“I am very much looking forward to your play, Señor de Quevedo.”
The queen was the extremely beautiful daughter of Henry IV of France, le Béarnois; she was twenty-three years old, pale-complexioned, and had a dimple in her chin. Her accent was as charming as her appearance, especially when, in her struggle to roll her r’s, she frowned a little, earnestly and courteously, as befitted such a refined and intelligent queen. She was clearly born to sit on a throne, and although she came from a foreign land, she reigned over Spain as a loyal Spaniard, just as her sister-in-law, Ana de Austria—sister of our Philip IV and wife of Louis XIII—reigned as a loyal Frenchwoman in her adoptive country. When the course of history brought the old Spanish lion into conflict with the young French wolf in a squabble over hegemony in Europe, both queens—brought up to fulfill the rigorous duties of honor and blood—unreservedly embraced the respective causes of their august husbands. In the harsh times that lay ahead, we Spaniards would find ourselves in the paradoxical position of coming to blows with a France ruled by a Spanish queen. Such are the vicissitudes of war and politics.
However, to return to that morning, to doña Isabel de Borbón and to the Alcázar Real, light was pouring in through the three balconies of the Room of Mirrors, gilding the queen’s curled hair and making her two simple pearl earrings gleam. She was dressed in homely fashion, within the constraints of her rank, in a mauve gown of heavy watered camlet decorated with silver braid; and sitting, as she was, on a stool by the window of the central balcony, an inch of white stocking was visible above her satin shoes.
“I hope I will not disappoint, my lady.”
“Oh, I am sure you will not. The court has complete confidence in your inventive talents.”
She was angelic, I thought, from where I stood in the doorway, not daring to move so much as an eyebrow. I had several reasons for feeling petrified, and finding myself in the presence of the queen was only one, and not, by the way, the most important. I had put on new clothes for the occasion, a black doublet with a starched collar, black breeches, and a cap, all of which a tailor in Calle Mayor, a friend of Captain Alatriste, had made for me—on account, and in just three days—as soon as we knew that don Francisco de Quevedo would be taking me with him to the palace. As a favorite of the court, and held in high esteem by the queen, don Francisco had become a regular guest at all courtly functions. He amused our king and queen with his remarks; he flattered the count-duke, who, with his ever-growing number of political opponents, found it useful to have Quevedo’s intelligent quill on his side; and he was adored by the ladies, who, at every party and every gathering, would plead with him to entertain them with his poetry or with some improvised verse. And so, astute and sharp as ever, the poet allowed himself to be loved; he exaggerated his limp so that others might forgive both his talent and his position as favorite; and he had no compunction about making the most of all this for as long as his luck lasted. There was evidently a favorable conjunction of the stars, but one that don Francisco’s stoical skepticism—gleaned from the classics and from his own experience of changing fortunes—told him would not last forever. As he himself used to say, we are what we are until we cease to be so. This was especially true in Spain, where these things change overnight. The same people who applauded you yesterday and felt honored to know you and to be your friend will, today, for no apparent reason, throw you into prison or put a penitent’s hat on your head and march you through the streets to the scaffold.
“Allow me, my lady, to introduce a young friend of mine. His name is Íñigo Balboa Aguirre and he fought in Flanders.”
Cap in hand, blushing furiously, I bowed so low that my forehead almost touched the floor. My embarrassment, as I have said, was due not only to finding myself in the presence of the wife of Philip IV. I was aware, too, of four pairs of eyes staring at me—the queen’s four maids of honor. They were sitting nearby on the satin pillows and cushions arranged on the yellow-and-red tiled floor, next to Gastoncillo, the French jester whom doña Isabel de Borbón had brought with her at the time of her nuptials with our king. The glances and smiles of these young ladies were enough to turn anyone’s head.
“So young,” said the queen.
She smiled sweetly at me, then started chatting with don Francisco about the details of the ballads he had written, while I stayed where I was, cap in hand, eyes fixed on some point in the distance, and having to lean against the tiled frieze behind me in case my legs gave way. The girls were all whispering to each other, and Gastoncillo joined in. I scarcely knew where to look. The jester was, it is true, only three foot tall and as ugly as sin, and famed at court for his wicked tongue—you can imagine just how funny it would be to hear a French dwarf telling jokes—but the queen liked him and everyone laughed at his jests, even if only reluctantly and out of duty. Anyway, I stayed where I was, as still as one of the figures in the paintings that adorned the walls of the room, which had only been open since the very recent restoration work on the palace façade had been completed, for in that ancient building, dark rooms from the last century adjoined or flowed into entirely modern, newly decorated on
es. I looked at Titian’s representations of Achilles and Ulysses above the doors, at his very apposite allegory Religion Succored by Spain, at the equestrian portrait of the great emperor Charles at the battle of Mühlberg, and, on the opposite wall, at another of Philip IV, also on horseback, painted by Diego Velázquez. Finally, when I knew each and every one of those canvases by heart, I summoned up sufficient courage to turn and look at the real reason for my unease. I could not say whether the pounding inside me came from the hammering of the carpenters who were preparing the nearby Salón Dorado for the queen’s evening party or from the blood pumping furiously through my veins and heart. However, there I stood, as if ready to withstand a charge from the Lutheran cavalry, and, opposite me, sitting on a red velvet cushion, was the blue-eyed angel-devil who simultaneously sweetened and soured my innocence and my youth. Needless to say, Angélica de Alquézar was watching me.
About an hour later, when the visit was over, and I was following don Francisco de Quevedo through the porticos of the Queen’s Courtyard, the jester Gastoncillo caught up with me, tugged discreetly at the sleeve of my doublet, and pressed a tightly folded piece of paper into my hand. I stood for a moment studying it, as it lay unopened in my palm; then, before don Francisco saw the note, I slipped it into my purse. I looked around, feeling bold and gallant, the bearer of a secret message, like some character out of a cloak-and-sword drama. “Dear God,” I thought, “life is beautiful and the court is a fascinating place.” The palace, where decisions were made as to the fate of an empire that bestrode two worlds, reflected the pulse of the Spain which, just then, I found so intoxicating. The two courtyards, the queen’s and the king’s, were full of courtiers, suitors, and idlers who came and went between the palace and the mentidero outside, through the archway where, in the shadows or silhouetted against the light, I could see the checkered uniforms of the old guard. Don Francisco de Quevedo, who was, as I have said, very much in vogue at the time, was constantly being stopped by people greeting him deferentially or asking for his support for some plan or proposal. Someone sought a favor for his nephew, another for a son-in-law, someone else for his son or brother-in-law. No one offered anything in return, no one made any personal commitment. They were content—like pirates—to go around demanding favors, as if these were their right; and all of them, of course, claimed to have the blood of the Goths flowing in their veins; and all were in pursuit of the dream nurtured by every Spaniard: to live without doing a stroke of work, to pay no taxes, and to swagger about with a sword at their belt and a cross embroidered on their doublet. To give you an idea of just how far we Spaniards would go when it came to petitions and requests, not even the saints of the churches were free from such importunate demands; people placed letters of entreaty in the hands of statues, asking for this or that worldly grace, as if the images were mere palace functionaries. Indeed, at the church of the much-solicited Saint Anthony of Padua, a notice was placed underneath the saint, saying: “Closed for business. Please try Saint Gaetano.”
Don Francisco de Quevedo was familiar with this game, for, in the past, he himself had felt no qualms about asking for favors—not all of which met with luck or good fortune—and now, like Saint Anthony of Padua, he listened and smiled and shrugged, never promising more than the bare minimum. “After all, I am only a poet,” he would say as he made his escape. And, sometimes, grown weary of some particularly importunate supplicant and unable to find a polite way of getting rid of him, he would end up simply telling him to go to hell.
“Christ’s blood,” he would mutter, “we’ve turned into a nation of beggars!”
This was not so very far from the truth, and would become truer still in the years to come. Spaniards did not consider a favor to be a privilege but an inalienable right, so much so that the fact of not possessing something our neighbor possessed blackened both our bile and our soul. As for that proverbial, much-vaunted Spanish virtue hidalguía, or nobility—a lie that even Corneille and many others like him had swallowed whole—I will say only that it may have existed once, when our compatriots had to fight to survive and valor was only one of many virtues impossible to buy with gold, but no more. Too much water had flowed under too many bridges since the days when don Francisco de Quevedo himself wrote, by way of an epitaph:
Here lies virtue, rough as sin,
Less rich, ’tis true, but feared the more,
With the vanity and dreams it’s buried in.
In the times I am describing, virtues, assuming always that they even existed, had almost all gone to the devil. We were left with nothing but the blind pride and lack of loyalty that would finally drag us into the abyss; and the little dignity we retained became the province of a few isolated individuals, or else appeared on the stages of our theaters—in the poetry of Lope and Calderón, and on the distant battlefields where our veteran troops were still fighting. It has always made me laugh to hear men declare, with a twirl of their mustaches, that ours is a dignified and gentlemanly nation. Well, I was, and am, a Basque and a Spaniard; I’ve lived my century from beginning to end, and along the way I’ve encountered many more San cho Panzas than Don Quixotes, more base, despicable, wicked, ambitious people than valiant, honest folk. Our one virtue was that when there was no alternative, some, even the very worst of us, died like men, standing up with sword in hand. The truth is, though, that it would have been far better to live and work for the progress we so rarely enjoyed; alas, kings and royal favorites and priests obstinately denied us this possibility. Each nation is as it is, and what happened in Spain happened. Yet, since we all went down in the end, perhaps it was better like that, with just a few desperate men salvaging the dignity of the unspeakable rump—as if it were the tattered standard from the Terheyden redoubt—by praying, blaspheming, killing, and fighting to their last breath. And that, at least, is something. When anyone asks me what I admire about this poor, sad land of Spain, I always repeat what I said to that French officer in Rocroi: “Count the dead.”
If you are gentleman enough to escort a lady, wait for me tonight at the Puerta de la Priora when the angelus is rung.
And that was all the note said; there was no signature. I read it several times, leaning against a column in the courtyard while don Francisco chatted with a group of acquaintances. Each time I read those words, my heart started pounding in my breast. During the time that Quevedo and I had been in the presence of the queen, Angélica de Alquézar had displayed no particular interest in me. She sat surrounded by her whispering companions, and even her smiles were subtle and contained, although, having said that, her blue eyes did occasionally fix on me with such intensity that I feared my legs might buckle. I was a handsome youth at the time, tall for my age, with bright eyes and thick black hair, and I cut quite a decent figure in my new clothes, and in the cap, complete with a red feather, that I was holding now in my hands. That is what had given me the courage to bear the scrutiny of my young lady, if the word “my” can be applied to the niece of the royal secretary Luis de Alquézar, for she was always herself alone, and even when I knew her mouth and her flesh—and I could not have imagined then how soon I would do so for the first time—I always felt like a temporary guest, an interloper, uncertain of the ground I was treading on and expecting, at any moment, that the servants should throw me out into the street. And yet, as I have said before, despite all that happened between us, despite the scar from the knife wound I bear on my back, I know—at least I want to believe that I do—that she always loved me. In her fashion.
We met the Count of Guadalmedina beneath one of the archways on the stairs. He had just emerged from Philip IV’s apartments, where he came and went much as he pleased, and to which the king had just retired after a morning spent hunting in the woods around Casa del Campo. Hunting was one of the king’s greatest pleasures, and it was known that he liked to hunt boar without the aid of dogs and could happily spend all day riding the hills in pursuit of his prey. Álvaro de la Marca was wearing a chamois leather doublet, mud
-spattered gaiters, and a neat little hat adorned with emeralds. He was dabbing at his face with a handkerchief drenched in scented water as he made his way to the front of the palace, where his carriage awaited him. He looked even more handsome than usual in his hunting costume, which gave a spuriously rustic touch to his otherwise courtly appearance. It was hardly surprising, I thought, that the ladies of the court always fanned themselves more furiously and more ostentatiously whenever the count looked at them; and that even the queen had at first shown a certain fondness for him, without, of course, acting in any way that went against her high rank and person. And I say “at first” because, by this time, Isabel de Borbón was aware of her august husband’s escapades and of the role that Guadalmedina played in these—as companion, escort, and procurer. She despised him for that, and although protocol obliged her to be polite—for as well as being her husband’s servant, he was also a grandee of Spain—she always went out of her way to treat him with particular coldness. There was only one other person at court whom the queen hated quite as much, and that was the Count-Duke of Olivares, whose position as royal favorite never met with the approval of that princess brought up in the arrogant court of Marie de’ Medici and Henry IV of France. Although loved and respected until her death, Isabel de Borbón would eventually lead the courtly palace faction which, a decade and a half later, would call a halt to the count-duke’s absolute power, pushing him off the pedestal to which he had been elevated by his intelligence, ambition, and pride. The people had listened to, admired, and feared great Philip II, then quietly complained about Philip III, but, under Philip IV, they had become so broken and exhausted, so weary of financial ruin and disaster, that their feelings had begun to shift from respect to despair. To assuage those feelings, they had to be served up a political head:
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