“His Excellency does not wish to receive you, sir.”
Diego Alatriste, who had been waiting, one hand on the hilt of his sword, was left dumbstruck by these words. The porter began ushering him out.
“Are you sure?”
The porter nodded scornfully, all trace of his earlier politeness gone.
“He recommends that you leave while you can.”
The captain was not a man to be easily shaken, but he could not help the wave of heat that rose to his face at finding himself so rudely treated. He shot another look at the porter, sensing that the latter was secretly enjoying his discomfiture. Then he took a deep breath and, repressing an urge to beat the man roundly with the flat of his sword, pulled his hat firmly down on his head, turned, and walked out into the street.
He walked blindly up Calle de Alcalá, barely noticing where he was going, as if there were a red veil before his eyes. He was cursing and blaspheming under his breath. Several times, as he strode along, he collided with other passersby; however, when they protested—one man even made as if to take out his sword—these protests vanished as soon as they saw his face. In this manner, he crossed Puerta del Sol and got as far as Calle Carretas. He stopped outside the Tavern of the Rock where he read these words chalked on the door: Wine from Esquivias.
That same night, he killed a man. He chose him at random and in silence from among the other customers crowding the bar—all as drunk as he was. In the end, he slammed down a few coins on the wine-stained table and staggered out, followed by the stranger, a braggart who, along with two other men, was clearly determined to pick a fight, and all because Alatriste kept staring at him. The braggart—Alatriste never got his name—already had his sword unsheathed and was declaring loudly and coarsely to anyone who would listen that he wouldn’t be stared at like that by any bastard, be he from Spain or from the Indies. Once outside, keeping close to the wall, Alatriste walked as far as Calle de los Majadericos, and there, under cover of darkness and safe from prying eyes, he waited until the footsteps following him grew nearer. Then he took out his sword, confronted the man, and ran him through there and then, making no pretense at observing fencing etiquette. The man dropped to the ground, with a wound to the heart, before he could utter a word, while his companions ran for their lives, crying: “Murder! Murder!” Standing next to his victim’s corpse and leaning against the wall for support, his sword still in his hand, Alatriste vomited up all the wine he had drunk that night. Then he wiped the blade of his sword with the dead man’s cloak, wrapped himself in his own, and made his way to Calle de Toledo, taking shelter in the shadows.
Three days later, don Francisco de Quevedo and I were crossing the Segovia bridge to go to the Casa de Campo, where Their Majesties were staying and taking advantage of the good weather; the king devoted himself to hunting and the queen to walking, reading, and music. We rode over the bridge in a carriage drawn by two mules and, leaving behind us the Ermita del Ángel and the beginning of the Camino de San Isidro, we proceeded along the right bank to the gardens that surrounded His Catholic Majesty’s country retreat. To one side of us grew tall pine woods, and on the other, across the Manzanares, lay Madrid in all its splendor: with its innumerable church and convent towers, its city walls built on the foundations of the former Arab fortifications, and high up, large and imposing, the Alcázar Real, with its Golden Tower like the prow of a galleon looking out over the slender Manzanares River, whose shores were dotted with the white clothes hung out to dry on the bushes by the washerwomen. It was, in short, a splendid scene, and in response to my admiring remarks, don Francisco smiled kindly and said:
“Oh, yes, it’s the center of the world all right—for the moment.”
I did not then understand the clear-sighted caution that lay behind this comment. As a young man, I was so dazzled by everything around me that I was incapable of imagining an end to the magnificence of the court, to our ownership of the globe, to the empire which—if one included the rich Portuguese inheritance that we shared at the time—comprised not only the Indies in the West, Brazil, Flanders, Italy, but also our possessions in Africa, the Philippines, and other enclaves in the remote Indies of the East. I could not conceive that one day this would all collapse when the men of iron were succeeded by men of clay incapable of sustaining such a vast enterprise with only their ambition, talent, and swords. For although Spain—forged out of glory and cruelty, out of light and dark—was already beginning to decline, the Spanish empire of my youth was still a mighty thing. It was a world that would never be repeated and that could be summed up, if such a thing is possible, in these old lines by Lorencio de Zamora:
I sing of battles and of conquests,
Barbarous deeds, great enterprises,
Sad events and grim disasters,
Hatred, laughter, atrocities.
So there we were that morning, don Francisco de Quevedo and I, outside the walls of what was then the capital of the world, stepping from a carriage into the gardens of the Casa de Campo, before the noble building with its Italianate porticos and loggias watched over by the imposing equestrian statue of the late Philip III, the father of our current king. And it was there—behind that statue, in the pleasant grove of poplars, willows, and other shrubs of Flemish origin that had been planted round the lovely three-tiered fountain—that our queen received don Francisco as she sat beneath a damask awning, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting and her personal servants, including the jester Gastoncillo. She greeted the poet with a show of royal affection and invited him to say the angelus with her, for it was midday and the bells were tolling throughout Madrid. I doffed my hat and watched from a distance. Then the queen ordered don Francisco to sit by her side, and they talked for some time about the progress of his play, The Sword and the Dagger, from which he read the final lines, lines he claimed to have dashed off the previous night, although I knew that he had, in fact, drafted and redrafted them several times. The one thing that bothered her, she said, only half joking, was that the play was to be performed in El Escorial, for the somber, austere character of that vast royal edifice was repugnant to her cheerful French temperament. This is why, wherever possible, she avoided visiting the palace built by the grandfather of her august husband. It was one of the paradoxes of fate that eighteen years after the events I am describing, the poor lady—much to her chagrin, I imagine—ended up occupying a niche in the crypt there.