It was Olmedilla who proposed calling in at a tavern, and Diego Alatriste agreed, although the suggestion took him by surprise. This was the first time Olmedilla had ever proved talkative or sociable. They went into the Seisdedos tavern, behind the building known as Las Atarazanas—the arsenal—and sat down at a table outside the door, underneath the porch and the awning that gave shelter from the sun. Alatriste removed his hat and placed it on a stool. A girl brought them a jug of Cazalla de la Sierra wine and a dish of purple olives, and Olmedilla drank with the captain. True, he barely tasted the wine, taking only a sip from his mug, but before doing so, he took a long look at the man beside him. His brow unfurrowed slightly.
“Well played,” he said.
The captain studied the accountant’s gaunt features, his sparse beard, his sallow, parchment-like skin, which seemed to have been contaminated by the candles used to light gloomy government offices. He said nothing, however, but simply raised the wine to his lips and, unlike Olmedilla, drained the mug to the lees. His companion continued to study him with interest.
“They weren’t exaggerating when they told me about you,” he said at last.
“That business with the Genoese fellow was easy,” replied Alatriste grimly, and said no more, but the ensuing silence said, “I’ve done other far more unsavory things.” That, at least, is how Olmedilla appeared to interpret it, because he nodded slowly, with the grave look of someone who understands and is too polite to ask further questions. As for Garaffa and his servant, they were, at that moment, sitting bound and gagged in a carriage driving them out of Seville to some destination unknown to the captain—he neither knew nor cared to know—with an escort of sinister-looking constables, whom Olmedilla had clearly alerted beforehand, for they appeared in Calle del Mesón del Moro as if by magic (the neighbors’ natural curiosity having been dampened by the fateful words “Holy Office of the Inquisition”), then vanished very discreetly with their prisoners in the direction of the Puerta de Carmona.
Olmedilla unbuttoned his doublet and took out a folded piece of paper bearing a seal. After holding it in his hand for a moment, as if overcoming a few final scruples, he placed it on the table before the captain.
“It’s an order of payment,” he said. “To the bearer it’s worth fifty old gold doubloons, double-headed. You can convert it into cash at the house of don Joseph Arenzana, in Plaza de San Salvador. No questions asked.”
Alatriste looked at the piece of paper but did not touch it. A double-headed doubloon was the most coveted coin of the day. They had been minted from fine gold over a century before, in the reign of the Catholic kings, and no one doubted their value when you slammed them down on the table. He knew men who would knife their own mother for a single one of those doubloons.
“There’ll be six times that amount,” added Olmedilla, “when it’s all over.”
“That’s good to know.”
The accountant gazed thoughtfully into his mug of wine. A fly was swimming about in it, making desperate attempts to clamber out.
“The fleet arrives in three days’ time,” he said, watching the dying fly.
“How many men will I need?”
Olmedilla pointed with an ink-stained finger at the order of payment. “That’s up to you. According to the Genoese fellow, the Niklaasbergen is carrying twenty or so sailors, a captain, and a pilot, all of them, apart from the pilot, Flemish or Dutch. In Sanlúcar, a few Spaniards might come on board with the cargo. And we only have one night.”
Alatriste made a rapid calculation. “Twelve or fifteen, then. With that amount of gold I can get all the men I need for the job.”
Olmedilla made a chary gesture with his hand, making it clear that Alatriste’s “job” was no business of his. He said, “You should have them ready the night before. The plan is to go down the river and reach Sanlúcar by evening.” He sank his chin in his ruff, as if thinking hard to make sure he had forgotten nothing. “I’ll be coming too.”
“All the way?”
“We’ll see.”
The captain made no attempt to conceal his surprise. “It won’t be a paper-and-ink affair.”
“That doesn’t matter. Once the ship is in our hands, I have a duty to check the cargo and organize its transfer.”
Alatriste had to suppress a smile. He couldn’t imagine the accountant mixing with the kind of people he was considering as recruits, but he could understand that one could never be too careful in such matters. So vast a quantity of gold was a temptation, and the odd ingot could easily get lost along the way.
“Needless to say,” added Olmedilla, “any theft will be punished by hanging.”
“Does that apply to you as well?”
“Perhaps, yes.”
Alatriste smoothed his mustache with one finger, then said drily, “I shouldn’t think they pay you enough for such alarming eventualities.”
“They pay me sufficient for me to do my duty.”
The fly had ceased struggling, but Olmedilla continued to stare at it. The captain poured more wine into his own mug. While he was drinking, he noticed that his companion had looked up again and was studying, with some interest, first the two scars on his forehead and then his left arm where his shirtsleeve concealed the burn beneath the bandage. The burn, by the way, stung like the very devil. Finally, Olmedilla frowned, as if he had been pondering a question he was afraid to ask out loud. “I was just wondering,” he said, “what you would have done if Garaffa had been less easily intimidated.”
Alatriste glanced up and down the street; the dazzle of sun on the opposite wall made him half close his eyes, so that he appeared even more inscrutable. Then he looked at the drowned fly in Olmedilla’s wine, took another sip from his own mug, and said nothing.
5. THE FIGHT
At the entrance to the Alameda, the pillars of Hercules stood in the moonlight like two halberds. The tops of elm trees stretched out behind them as far as the eye could see, making the night seem still darker beneath the arbor of their branches. At that hour, there were no carriages filled with elegant ladies and no Sevillian gentlemen on horse-back, capering and caracoling amongst the bushes, fountains, and pools. All I could hear was the sound of water and, sometimes, in the distance, a dog barking anxiously somewhere over near the chapel of La Cruz del Rodeo.
I stopped beside one of the thick stone pillars and listened, holding my breath. My throat was as dry as if it had been dusted with sand, and my pulses were pounding so hard in my wrists and my temples that if, at that moment, someone had cut open my heart, they would have found not a drop of blood in it. As I fearfully scanned the Alameda, I pushed back my short cape to uncover the hilt of the sword I was wearing tucked in my leather belt. In such a deserted place, the weight of the sword, along with that of my dagger, was a great comfort to me. Then I checked the lacing on the buff coat protecting my torso. The coat belonged to Captain Alatriste, and I had “borrowed” it from him while he was downstairs with don Francisco de Quevedo and Sebastián Copons, eating and drinking and talking about Flanders. I had pretended to be feeling unwell and retired early in order to carry out the plan I had been mulling over all day. To this end, I gave my face and hair a thorough wash and then put on a clean shirt, in case, at the end of the night, a scrap of that shirt should end up buried in my flesh. The captain’s buff coat was rather too large for me, and so I had padded it out by wearing my old doublet underneath, stuffed with tow. I completed this outfit with a pair of much-patched chamois leather breeches that had survived the siege of Breda—and which would protect my thighs from any possible knife thrusts—a pair of buskins with esparto soles, some gaiters, and a cap. Not exactly the attire to go courting in, I thought, when I saw my reflection in the copper bottom of a saucepan, but better a live ruffian than a dead fop.