It was a combat of which epics are made. Boxes, galleries, cazuela, benches, and yard—all stupefied to see Charles and Buckingham appear with weapons in hand—exploded with a roar of applause and shouts of approval. With that, our lord and king reacted, rose to his feet, turned to his courtiers, and ordered them to end the madness. As he gave the order, his glove dropped to the floor. And that, in someone who ruled forty-four years without ever raising an eyebrow or changing expression in public, betrayed how that afternoon in El Principe corral, the monarch of both the new world and the old came within an ace of revealing
emotion.
XI THE SEAL AND THE LETTER
Through a window that opened onto one of the large courtyards of the Alcazar Real, the crisp shouts of the Spanish, Burgundian, and German troops reached Diego Alatriste's ears as the guard was changed at the palace gates. There was a single carpet on the wood floor of the room, and on it an enormous dark table covered with papers, files, and books, as somber as the man seated behind it. This man was methodically reading letters and dispatches, one after another, and from time to time he wrote something in a margin with a quill he dipped into a Talavera pottery inkwell. He worked without stopping, as if ideas were flowing across the paper as smoothly as his reading, or the ink. This went on for a long while.
The man did not look up even when the head constable, Martin Saldana, accompanied by the sergeant and two soldiers of the royal guard who had brought Diego Alatriste through secret corridors, led him in and then withdrew. The man at the table continued dispatching letters, unperturbed, as if he were alone, so the captain had all the time in the world to study him. He was corpulent, with a large head and a ruddy face; coarse black hair fell over his ears, and his chin and cheeks were covered by a thick dark beard and enormous mustache. He was clad in dark blue silk trimmed with black braid, and his shoes and hose were black as well. On his chest blazed the red cross of Calatrava, which along with the white ruff and a handsome gold chain was the only contrast to his somber attire.
Although Gaspar de Guzman, third Conde de Olivares, would not be made a duke until two years later, he was enjoying his second year of favor at court. At age thirty-five, he was a grandee of Spain, and his power was enormous. The young monarch, much fonder of fiestas and hunting than of affairs of government, was a blind instrument in Guzman's hands, and any who might have overshadowed him were either crushed or dead. His former protectors, the Duque de Uceda and Fray Luis de Aliaga, favorites of the previous king, found themselves in exile; the Duque de Osuna was in disgrace, with his properties confiscated; the Duque de Lerma had escaped the gibbet thanks to his cardinal's robes—He whose cape is cardinal red will not hang by the neck until he's dead, was the old saying—and
Rodrigo Calderon, another of the principals in the former regime, had been executed in the public plaza. Now no one stood in the way of that intelligent, cultured, patriotic, and ambitious man's design to hold in his hands the strings of the empire that was still the most powerful on earth.
It is easy enough to imagine the emotions Diego Alatriste was experiencing as he stood before this all-powerful favorite of the king in that huge chamber in which, except for the table and carpet, the only decoration, mounted above a large unlighted fireplace, was a portrait of Philip the Second, grandfather of the present monarch. The captain's apprehension grew after he recognized in the man at the table—without the least doubt or pause to consider—the taller and stronger of the two masked men from that first night at the Santa Barbara gate. The same man whom the one with the round head had called Excellency before his superior left, after requesting that not too much blood be shed in the affair of the two Englishmen.
If only, the captain thought, the execution that lay in store for him would not be by garrote. It was not that dangling at the end of a rope was his cup of tea, either, but at least it was better than being removed with an ignominious tourniquet squeezing tighter and tighter around his neck, his face contorted as he heard the executioner say, "Forgive me, Your Mercy, I am only following orders."
May Christ unleash a thunderbolt to incinerate all the spineless lackeys who were "just following orders," and take with them the bastards who gave the orders as well. Not to mention the obligatory handcuffs, brazier, judge, reporter, scribe, and executioner needed to obtain a proper confession before speeding your disjointed body toward Hell. Diego Alatriste did not sing well with a rope around his neck, so his last serenade would be long and painful. Given a choice, he would have preferred to end his days with steel, fighting. That was, after all, the decent way for a soldier to make his exit: Viva Espana! and all that, and little angels singing his way in Heaven, or wherever he was to go.
"But not many blessings are being handed out these days," a worried Martin Saldana had whispered to him when he came to wake him at the prison that early morning and take him to the Alcazar.
"By my faith, it looks bad this time, Diego."
"I have had it worse."
"No. Not ever. The person who wants to see you allows no man to save himself by his sword."
Worse, Alatriste had nothing to fight with. Even the slaughterer's knife in his boot had been taken from him when he was imprisoned after the row in the corral de comedias, when the intervention of the Englishmen had at least prevented him from being killed on the spot.
"En pas ahora este-umos "—we're even now—Charles of England had said when the guard arrived to separate the contenders, or protect him, which in reality was one and the same. And after sheathing his sword, he, along with Buckingham, had turned away, acting as if he were completely unaware of the applause of an admiring public. Don Francisco de Quevedo was allowed to go, by the personal order of the king, who apparently had been pleased with his latest sonnet. As for the five swordsmen, two escaped in the confusion, one had been carried off gravely wounded, and the other two were arrested at the same time as Alatriste and put in the cell next to his. As the captain left that morning with Saldana, he had passed by that same cell. Empty.
The Conde de Olivares continued to focus on his correspondence, and the captain looked toward the window, with somber hope. That out might save him from the executioner and shorten the process, although a thirty-foot fall from the window to the courtyard might not be enough; he might merely expose himself to the torment of ending up injured but alive, and hoisted onto the mule to hang, broken legs and all, which was not a pretty picture. And there was yet another problem: What if there was Someone up there after all? He would hold Alatriste's jumping to his death against him all through an afterlife no less unpleasant for being hypothetical.
So if the bugles were blowing Retreat! it was better to go having had the sacraments, and dispatched by another hand. Just in case. When all was said and done, he consoled himself, however painful, and however long it takes to die, in the end you are just as dead. And he who dies finds rest.
He was mulling over these happy thoughts when he became aware that the court favorite had finished his task and had turned his attention to him. Those fiery black eyes seemed to be taking in every detail. Alatriste, whose doublet and hose showed the signs of the night spent in a cell, regretted that he did not present a better appearance. A clean bandage over the slash on his forehead would have helped, and water to wash away the dried blood on his face.