I have run like that only a few times in my life. Your Mercies should try it, soaked in water and mud in the black of night. I ran blindly, with my head down, risking a roll down the slope straight into the Merck. As the cold, moist air entered my lungs it turned to fire, and I felt as if my chest were being pricked by red-hot needles. Then, just as I was beginning to wonder if I had gone too far, I came to the pontoons. I grabbed on to the stakes and concentrated on crossing, slipping on the wet wood. I had barely reached the other side, back on solid ground, when a flash lit the darkness and the whir of a harquebus ball passed a hairsbreadth from my head.
“Antwerp!” I yelled, throwing myself to the ground.
“Bugger it,” a voice replied.
Two pale silhouettes, crouched down, were outlined against the fog.
“You’ve just had a lucky escape, comrade,” said the second voice.
I got to my feet and went toward them. I could not see their faces, but I did see the white of their shirts and the sinister shadows of the harquebuses that had been so close to sending me to my rest:
“Did Your Mercies not see my shirt?” I asked, still breathless from running and fright.
“What shirt?” one asked.
I felt my chest, surprised, and did not swear only because I was still not old enough, nor was I in the habit of doing so. During the attack, I had lain face down for so long on the dike, my shirt was now dark with mud.
9. THE COLONEL AND
THE BANNER
During that time, Maurice of Nassau died, to the sorrow of the Estates General and the gratification of the true religion, but not before wresting from us, by way of farewell, the city of Goch, burning the supplies we had stored in Ginneken, and attempting to take Antwerp with a surprise attack that ended up backfiring on him. That heretic, the paladin of Calvin’s abominable sect, would go to hell without allaying his obsessive hunger to end the siege of Breda. To offer our condolences to the Dutch, our cannons spent the day tidily dropping seventy-pound balls on the walls of the city, and at daybreak, through the efforts of our sappers, we blew up a bulwark with thirty good citizens inside, giving them a rather rude awakening and demonstrating that God does not always reward the early riser.
At that point Breda was no longer a matter of military interest to Spain but, rather, one of reputation. The world was in suspense, awaiting the triumph or the failure of the troops of the Catholic king. Even the sultan of the Turks—may Christ visit foul excrescences upon him—was awaiting the outcome to see whether our lord and king would emerge with more or less power. And in Europe the eyes of every king and prince, particularly those of France and England, were focused on the stalemate, eager to benefit from our misfortune or to grieve over Spanish gains, which was equally true in the Mediterranean of the Venetians and even the Roman pope. For His Holiness, despite being the Divinity’s earthly vicar, with all the attendant paraphernalia, and also despite the fact that it was we Spanish who were doing his dirty work in Europe, bankrupting ourselves in defense of God and the Most Blessed Mary, harassed us whenever he could, because he was jealous of our influence in Italy. There is nothing like being powerful and feared for a couple of centuries to cause enemies with malicious intentions, whether or not they wear the pope’s triple crown, to spring up on every side. Under the mantle of pleasant words, smiles, and diplomacy, they take painstaking care in completely buggering you. Although in the case of the sovereign pontiff, his biliousness was, to a degree, understandable. After all, only a century before the problem of Breda, his predecessor, Clement VII, had had to take to his heels, tucking up his cassock as he ran and taking refuge in the Castel Sant’Angelo, when the Spaniards and German mercenaries of our Charles V—who had carried an unpaid bill since the time of El Cid—had attacked his walls and sacked Rome without respecting cardinals’ palaces, or women, or convents. It is therefore only fair we should remember that even popes have a good memory and their own crumb of honor.
“I have a letter for you, Íñigo.”
Surprised, I looked up at Captain Alatriste. He was standing at the entrance to the hut we had constructed of blankets, fascines, and mud, where I was spending time with some of my comrades. He was wearing his hat and had thrown his frayed wool cape around his shoulders, its hem slightly lifted by the sheath of his sword. The broad brim of his hat, the heavy mustache and aquiline nose, accentuated the leanness of his weathered face, now unnaturally pale. He had not been in good health for several days, due to some foul water—our bread was moldy as well, and meat, when we had it, was full of worms—that had set his body on fire and poisoned his blood with fever. The captain, nonetheless, was no friend to bloodletting or purges; he always said those measures killed more often than they cured. So he was just returning from the camp of the sutlers, where an acquaintance who acted as both barber and apothecary had brewed a concoction of herbs to lower his fever.
“A letter for me?”
“So it seems.”
I left Jaime Correas and the others and, brushing the dirt from my breeches, went outside. We were far out of range of the walls, near the palisade where we kept the carts and dray horses, and close to certain ramshackle hovels that served as taverns when there was wine, and as brothels with German, Italian, Flemish, and Spanish women for the troops. It was a favorite place for us mochileros to forage for food, with all the cunning and mischief our calling and our youth lent us as we sought ways to live in comparative comfort. It was rare that we did not return from our pilfering with two or three eggs, some apples, tallow candles, or some useful object we could sell or trade. With such industry I offered some succor to Captain Alatriste and his comrades, and when I had a real stroke of luck I bowed to my own pleasure, which might include a visit, along with Jaime Correas, to La Mendoza’s shack, where, since the conversation between Diego Alatriste and the Valencian Candau on the banks of the dike, my entry had never been disputed. The captain, who knew what I was about, had discreetly admonished me, saying simply that women who follow soldiers are the source of pustules, pestilence, and sword fights. The truth is that I did not know what the captain’s relations with such females had been in other times, but I can say that never in Flanders did I see him enter a house or a tent with a swan swinging at the entrance. I did learn, it is true, that once or twice, with Captain Bragado’s permission, he had gone to Oudkerk, which was now the garrison of a Burgundian bandera, to visit the Flemish woman I have spoken of elsewhere. It was rumored that on his last visit, Alatriste had exchanged harsh words with the husband, whose arse he had ended up kicking into the canal, and had even had to draw his sword when a pair of Burgundians tried to squeeze into a procession they’d not been invited to join. But since that time, he had not been back.
As for me, my sentiments regarding the captain were beginning to be ambiguous, although I was barely aware of it. On the one hand, I obeyed him implicitly, offering him the sincere devotion that Your Mercies know so well. On the other hand, like any youth growing out of his boyhood, I was beginning to feel the weight of his shadow. Flanders had catalyzed the transformations in me natural for a boy who lived among soldiers and who furthermore had had the opportunity to fight for his life, his reputation, and his king. Also, I had recently been troubled by questions that my master’s silences no longer answered. All of this was making me consider the possibility of enlisting as a soldier, and although I was not yet old enough—it was rare at that time to serve if one was younger than seventeen or eighteen, which meant I would have to lie—somehow I thought that a turn of fortune might somehow facilitate my ambition. After all, Captain Alatriste himself had enlisted when he was barely fifteen, during the siege of Hulst. That had been during the famous exercise conceived to divert the enemy from a planned attack on the fort of La Estrella, when mochileros, pages, and every available servant had marched out armed with pikes, banners, and drums and paraded along a dike, tricking the enemy into taking them for replacement troops. The assault that followed was bloody; so bloody that most of the youths, finding themselves with weapons and their zeal kindled by the battle, ran to back up their masters, courageously jumping into the fire. Diego Alatriste, who at that time was a drummer in the bandera of Captain Pérez de Espila, went with them. Some, Alatriste among them, fought so bravely that Prince Albert, who was already governor of Flanders and was personally overseeing the siege, rewarded them by letting them enlist.