Alatriste digested all this in silence. He knew Martín and Eguiluz, both veteran soldiers who could be trusted when it came to shaking hands with the Dutch, or with anyone else for that matter. Neither would make a bad partner at the fiesta.
“You will be the fifth,” said don Carlos del Arco.
Unblinking, with his hat in one hand and the other on his sword, Alatriste frowned. He did not care for the dandy’s tone or the way he considered Alatriste’s role a fait accompli, especially since this guzmán was not exactly an officer. Nor did he like the gold tassels on his red band or the petulant air of a man who has an endless supply of gold coins in his pouch and a father in Burgos who is a marqués. Finally, he did not like the fact that his commander, Captain Bragado, was standing there without a word to say for himself. Bragado was a good military man, and he knew how to combine those skills with delicate diplomacy, which had stood him in good stead during his career, but Diego Alatriste y Tenorio was not the kind of man to welcome orders from arrogant fops, however daring they might be and however much they drank his colonel’s wine from crystal goblets. All of which caused the affirmative answer he was about to give to linger a moment on his lips. That hesitation was misinterpreted by del Arco.
“Of course,” he said with a snort of disdain, “if you consider the matter too dangerous…”
He left his words hanging in the air and looked around as a smirk appeared on his companion’s face. Ignoring the warning glances Captain Bragado was sending his way, Alatriste took his hand from his sword and fingered his mustache with supreme calm. It was a way as good as any to contain the anger surging from his stomach to his chest, causing his blood to pound slowly, regularly, in his temples. He fixed his icy gaze on one of the caballeros and then on the other for a long moment, so long that the colonel, who had been standing all that time with his back turned, as if none of this concerned him, swung around to observe him. But Alatriste was already addressing Carmelo Bragado.
“I assume that this is your order, mi capitán.”
Bragado slowly put his hand to the back of his neck, rubbing it without answering, and then looked toward Sergeant-Major Idiáquez, whose furious eyes were shooting daggers at the two guzmanes. But then don Pedro de la Daga himself replied.
“There are no orders in questions of honor,” he said insolently. “Each man is answerable for his reputation and his shame.”
When he heard that, Alatriste paled, and his right hand slowly descended toward the hilt of his blade. The look Bragado sent him was now imploring: To show even an inch of blade would mean the gallows. But Alatriste was thinking of something more than an inch. In fact, he was coolly calculating how much time he would need to thrust the sword through the colonel first and then quickly turn to the caballeros. Perhaps he would have time to take one of them, preferably Carlos del Arco, before Idiáquez and Bragado killed him like a dog.
The sergeant-major cleared his throat, visibly perturbed. He was the only person who, because of his rank and privileges in the tercio, could contradict Jiñalasoga. He had also known Diego Alatriste some twenty years, ever since that day in Amiens when, one being a boy and the other a youth whose mustache was just beginning to grow, they had set out together from the Montrecourt ravelin in the company of Captain don Diego de Villalobos: In four hours they had nailed down the enemy artillery and killed the last of the eight hundred Frenchmen manning the trenches, giving in exchange the lives of seventy comrades. Which was not a bad trade, pardiez: eleven of them for every one of us, if my arithmetic is correct, and a bonus of thirty.
“With all due respect, Your Mercy,” Idiáquez intervened, “Diego Alatriste is a veteran soldier. Everyone knows that his reputation is irreproachable. I am sure that—”
The colonel interrupted him with a curt gesture. “Irreproachable reputations are not granted for life.”
“Diego Alatriste is a good soldier,” Captain Bragado spoke up from the background; he had become embarrassed by his own silence.
Don Pedro de la Dago quieted him with another brusque gesture. “Any good soldier—and in my tercio they are as numerous as grains of sand—would give his arm to be at the Den Bosch gate tomorrow morning.”
Diego Alatriste looked straight into the colonel’s eyes. His voice was slow and low, as cold as the fingertips tingling to draw his dagger.
“I use my two arms to comply with my duty to the king. He is the one who pays me…when I am paid.” His pause seemed infinitely long. “As for my honor and my reputation, have no care, Your Mercy, for I see to that, with no need for anyone to offer me duels or give me lessons.”
The colonel looked at Alatriste as if he intended to remember him for the rest of his life. It was clear that he was reviewing in his mind everything he had heard, sentence by sentence, seeking one word, a tone, a nuance, that would allow him to string a rope in the nearest tree. This was so obvious that the hand covered by Alatriste’s hat slid toward his left hip, close to the hilt of his dagger. At the first sign, he thought with resigned calm, I will put this dagger through your throat, pull out my sword, and let God or the devil prevail.
“This man may return to the trenches,” Jiñalasoga said finally.
No doubt the memory of the recent mutiny tempered the colonel’s natural inclination to make use of the noose. Bragado and Idiáquez, who had been watching Diego Alatriste’s hands, seemed to relax with no little relief. Cloaking the relief that he too was feeling, Alatriste nodded respectfully, turned, and walked from the tent into the fresh air, pausing beside the halberds of the German sentinels who could, so easily, have been leading him on a scenic trip to the gallows. He stood stock-still for a moment, gratefully observing a sun that was disappearing below the dikes, a sun that he was now certain of seeing rise the next morning. Then he clapped his hat onto his head and started back to the parapets leading to the Cemetery ravelin.
That night Captain Alatriste, wrapped in his cape, lay awake almost till dawn, gazing up at the stars. It was neither the colonel’s disfavor nor fear of dishonor that kept him awake while his comrades snored around him. He did not give a fig for whatever version of the story might circulate through the tercio, for Idiáquez and Bragado knew him well and would give the episode the report it deserved. Furthermore, as he had said to don Pedro de la Daga, he would earn his own respect among his equals as well as those who were not. No, it was something else that denied him sleep. And that something was his fervent wish that at least one of the guzmanes would survive the next day at the Den Bosch gate. Preferably Carlos del Arco. For then, he told himself as his eyes drank in the firmament, time passes, life takes many turns, and a man never knows what old acquaintance he might meet in just the right place, at just the right time: in the quiet darkness, with no one around to hear the sound of ringing swords.
The next day, with our men watching from our trenches and the enemy from theirs as well as from atop the city walls, five men walked forward from the lines of our lord and king toward the encounter while another five emerged from the Den Bosch gate. These five, according to the rumor running around the camp, were three Dutchmen, a Scot, and a Frenchman. As for ours, Captain Bragado had chosen as the fifth member of the party Second Lieutenant Minaya, a thirty-year-old from the city of Soria: honorable, trustworthy, with good legs and a better hand. Both teams came wearing a sword and two pistols at the waist but no dagger; it was said that the challengers had not included them because everyone knows how dangerous a Spaniard with a dagger can be in close combat.