“What happened?” he asked grimly.
“They’re not coming.”
He had turned at last to face Jaqueta, very coldly and calmly. Jaqueta opened his mouth, but said nothing. He stood like that for a moment, then turned to the other men, urging them to obey the captain’s orders. The boats and the lights were coming nearer, and our men began to climb down the rope ladder to the tongue of sand, uncovered by the low tide, on which the galleon had run aground. Bartolo Cagafuego and the mulatto Campuzano, whose head was swathed in a huge bandage like a turban, were carefully helping Enríquez el Zurdo off the ship; El Zurdo was bleeding profusely from a broken nose and had a couple of nasty cuts to his arms. Ginesillo el Lindo, in turn, went to the aid of Saramago, who was limping painfully from a long gash in his thigh.
“Any closer, and they’d have had my balls,” Saramago said mournfully.
The last to leave were Jaqueta—once he had closed the eyes of his comrade Sangonera—and Juan Eslava. No one had to bother with Andresito el de los Cincuenta, because by then he had been dead for some time. Copons appeared at the top of the steps to the hold and went straight over to the side of the ship. At that moment, a man climbed on board, and I recognized the fellow with the ginger mustache who had spoken to Olmedilla earlier. He was still dressed as a hunter and was armed to the teeth; behind him came several more men. Despite their disguise, they were all clearly soldiers. They eyed with professional curiosity the bodies of our dead comrades and the blood-stained deck, and the man with the ginger mustache stood for a while studying Olmedilla’s corpse. Then he came over to the captain.
“How did it happen?” he asked, pointing to the accountant.
“As these things do,” said Alatriste laconically.
The other man looked at him intently, then said very equably, “Good work.”
Alatriste did not respond. Heavily armed men continued to clamber on board. Some were carrying harquebuses with the fuses lit.
“In the name of the king,” said the man with the ginger mustache, “I take charge of this ship.”
I saw my master nod, and then I followed him over to the gunwale, where Sebastián Copons was already climbing down the rope ladder. Alatriste turned to me with that same distracted air, and put a helping arm around me. I leaned against him, and breathed in from his clothes the smell of leather and steel mixed with the smell of blood from the men he had killed that night. He went down the ladder, all the while supporting me, until we reached the sand. The water came up to our ankles. We got wetter as we waded toward the beach, plunging in up to our waists, and my wound stung fiercely. Shortly afterward, with me still leaning on the captain for support, we reached land, where our men were gathered in the darkness. Around them were the shadows of more armed men, as well as the blurred shapes of many mules and carts ready to carry off what lay in the ship’s holds.
“Ye gods,” said one man, “we certainly earned our keep tonight.”
These words, spoken in a cheery tone of voice, broke the silence and the tension. As always after combat—and I had seen this over and over in Flanders—the men gradually began to talk and open up, with just a comment here and there at first, brief remarks, complaints, and sighs. Then they launched into oaths and boasts and laughter: I did this, someone else did that. Some described in detail how they had boarded the ship or else asked how such and such a comrade had died. I heard no one regret the passing of the accountant Olmedilla: they had never taken to that scrawny individual dressed all in black, and it was as clear as day that he was ill-equipped for such work. As far as everyone there was concerned, his life wasn’t worth a candle.
“What happened to El Bravo de los Galeones?” asked someone. “I didn’t see him peg it.”
“No, he was alive at the end,” said another.
“Suárez didn’t get off the ship either,” added a third.
No one had an explanation, and those who did kept quiet. There were a few muttered comments, but Suárez had no friends amongst that crew, most of whom also loathed El Bravo. No one really felt their absence.
“All the more for us, I suppose,” remarked one man.
Someone gave a coarse guffaw, and the subject was dropped. And I wondered—and had few illusions about the answer—if I were lying on deck, stiff and cold as a piece of salt tuna, would I merit the same epitaph? I saw the silent shadow of Juan Jaqueta, and although I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was looking at Captain Alatriste.
We walked to a nearby inn, which was all prepared to receive us for the night. The innkeeper—a scurvy knave if ever there was one—had only to see our faces, our bandages, and our ironware to treat us as diligently and obsequiously as if we were grandees of Spain. And so there was wine from Jerez and Sanlúcar for everyone, a fire to dry our clothes by, and abundant food, of which we ate every crumb, for the recent violent fracas had left us all with empty bellies. Mugs of wine and plates of roast kid were quickly dispatched, and we drank to our dead comrades and to the gleaming gold coins piled up on the table before us; they had been delivered before dawn by the man with the ginger mustache, who came accompanied by a surgeon to attend to our injuries; he cleaned the wound in my side, sewed it up, and applied some ointment and a fresh, clean bandage. Gradually, amid the vinous vapors, the men all fell asleep. Occasionally, El Zurdo or Saramago would moan out loud or there would be raucous snores from Copons, who was sleeping stretched out on a rug, as oblivious to his surroundings as he had been in the mud of the Flanders trenches.
Discomfort prevented me from sleeping. It was my first wound, and I would be lying if I denied that the pain from it filled me with a new and inexpressible pride. Now, with the passing of time, I bear other marks on both flesh and memory: that first wound is now only a near-imperceptible line on my skin, tiny compared with the wound I suffered at Rocroi or the one inflicted on me by Angélica de Alquézar’s dagger. But sometimes I run my fingers over it and remember, as if it were yesterday, that night at Barra de Sanlúcar, the fighting on board the Niklaasbergen, and El Bravo’s blood staining the king’s gold red.
Nor can I forget Captain Alatriste as I saw him in the early hours of that morning when pain kept me from sleep. He was sitting on a stool, apart from everyone else, his back against the wall, watching the gray dawn creep in through the window, while he drank his wine slowly and methodically, as I had so often seen him do before, until his eyes became like opaque glass and his head sank slowly onto his chest, and sleep—a lethargy not unlike death—overwhelmed both body and mind. And I had shared his life for long enough to know that, even in his dreams, Diego Alatriste would continue to move through the personal wilderness that was his life, silent, solitary, and selfish, oblivious of everything except the clear-sighted indifference of one who knows the narrow line that separates being alive from being dead, of one who kills in order to preserve his life’s breath and to keep himself, too, in hot meals. One who is reluctant to obey the rules of that strange game: the old ritual in which men like him have been immersed since the world began. Such things as hatred, passionate beliefs, and flags had nothing to do with it. It would doubtless have been more bearable if, instead of the bitter clarity that filled his every act and thought, Captain Alatriste had enjoyed the magnificent gifts of stupidity, fanaticism, or malice, because only the stupid, the fanatical, and the malicious live lives free from ghosts or from remorse.
EPILOGUE
The sergeant of the Spanish guard cut an imposing figure in his red-and-yellow uniform, and he eyed me with some irritation as I walked through the palace gates with don Francisco de Quevedo and Captain Alatriste. He was the same burly, mustachioed fellow with whom I had had words days before outside those very walls, and he was doubtless surprised to see me there in my new doublet, with my hair combed, and looking handsomer than Narcissus himself, while don Francisco showed him the document authorizing us to attend the royal reception being held in honor of the municipal council and commercial tribunal of Seville to celebrate the arrival of the treasure fleet.