Spanish, addressing himself more to Guadalmedina than to Alatriste.
'I regret what happened,' the captain replied evenly, with a nod. 'But we are not all privileged to do as we will with our swords.'
The Englishman stared at him a few instants longer. Scorn was apparent in his blue eyes; all the surprise and spontaneity of the first moments after the struggle in the lane had vanished. He had had time to think things over, and the recollection of having found himself at the mercy of an unknown swordsman wounded his self-esteem. Thence the newly emerged arrogance, which Alatriste had not so much as glimpsed when they crossed blades earlier in the lantern light.
'I believe we are even,' Buckingham said after a moment. And turning abruptly, he began to put on his gloves.
Beside him, the younger Englishman, the purported John Smith, his brow clear, white, and noble, his features finely chiseled, stood in silence. Despite the traveling clothes, the delicate hands and elegant stance betrayed from afar that he was a young man of distinguished family. Beneath his smooth mustache the captain glimpsed the suggestion of a smile. Alatriste nodded again and was about to leave, when the still-unidentified man spoke a few words in his language that made his companion turn toward him. Out of the corner of his eye, Alatriste saw Guadalmedina smile: in addition to French and Latin, he spoke the heretics' tongue.
'My friend says that he owes you his life.' George Villiers appeared uncomfortable. As far as he was concerned, the conversation was clearly closed, but grudgingly he translated the younger man's words. 'He says that the last thrust from the man in black would have been lethal.'
'Possibly.' Alatriste, too, allowed himself a slight smile. 'We all were blessed tonight, I believe.'
The Englishman finished fitting on his gloves as he listened carefully to what his companion told him.
'My friend would like to know what it was that made you reconsider and change sides.'
'I have not changed sides,' said Alatriste. 'I am always on my own. I hunt alone.'
As his friend translated, the younger man studied the captain thoughtfully. Suddenly, he seemed more mature and more authoritative than his companion. The captain had observed that even Guadalmedina deferred to him more than he did to Buckingham. Then the younger man spoke again, and his companion protested in their language, as if he did not agree that he should translate those last words. But his friend insisted, with a tone of authority that Alatriste had not heard from him before.
'The gentleman says,' Buckingham translated, unwillingly, in his broken Spanish, 'that it does not matter who you are or what your office may be, only that you acted nobly when you saved him from being killed like a common dog, a victim of treachery. He says that despite everything, he considers himself in your debt and wants you to know... He says ...' The translator hesitated a moment and exchanged a worried glance with Guadalmedina before he continued. 'He says that tomorrow all Europe will know that the son and heir of King James of England is in Madrid with the sole escort and company of his friend the Marquis of Buckingham.... And he says that though for reasons of state it is impossible to publish what happened tonight, he, Charles, Prince of Wales, future King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, will never forget that a man named Diego Alatriste could have killed him, but chose not to.'
VI. THE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES
The next morning Madrid awakened to the incredible news. Charles Stuart, cub of the English lion, impatient with the pace of matrimonial negotiations with the Infanta dona Maria, sister of our King Philip the Fourth, had with his friend Buckingham conceived this extraordinary and preposterous project of traveling to Madrid, incognito, to meet his future bride. In so doing, he hoped to transform the cold diplomatic exchanges that had been languishing for months in the chancelleries into a novel of chivalric love.
The marriage between the Anglican prince and the Catholic princess had at this point become a complicated imbroglio in which ambassadors, diplomats, ministers, foreign governments, and even His Holiness the Roman Pope were caught up. The pope would have to authorize the union and was, of course, angling for the largest slice of this tasty pie. So, impatient that no one was flushing his partridge—or whatever those accursed English hunt—the Prince of Wales, seconded by Buckingham, had with his boyish imagination devised a plan to hasten negotiations. Between them they had plotted, confident that traveling to Spain without notice or protocol would immediately conquer the Infanta, and they would carry her off to England before the astonished gaze of all of Europe, and with the applause and approval of the Spanish and English peoples.
That, more or less, was the heart of the matter. Once King James's initial resistance had been overcome, he gave both youths his benediction and authorized them to set out. Though the risk of his son's undertaking was great—an accident, failure, or a Spanish rebuff would put England's honor on the line—the advantages of achieving a happy ending balanced the risk. First of all, to have the monarch of the nation that was still the most powerful in the world as brother-in-law to his heir was not a small thing. In addition, the marriage, desired by the English court but received more coolly by the Conde de Olivares and the ultra-Catholic counselors of the King of Spain, would put an end to the old enmity between the two nations. Consider, Your Mercies, that barely thirty years had gone by since the defeat of the Invincible Armada; and you know how that went, with cannon shot here and the briny deep there. Yes, the Devil takes all, in that fatal arm-wrestling contest between our good King Don Philip the Second and that redheaded harpy named Elizabeth of England, harborer of Protestants, bastards, and pirates, and better known as the Virgin Queen, though be damned if it is possible to imagine her Virgin anything.
The fact is that a wedding between the young heretic and our infanta—who was no Venus but was not all that bad, if you go by how Diego Velazquez painted her a little later, young and blonde, a lady... with that very Hapsburg lip, of course—would peacefully open the ports of commerce in the West Indies to England, resolving the burning problem of the Palatinate in favor of. the British. That is a story I do not choose to go into here, because that is what history tomes are for.
So that is how the cards had been dealt the night that I was sleeping like a dormouse on my pallet in Calle del Arcabuz, unaware of what was brewing, while Captain Alatriste, with one hand on the grip of his pistol, and his sword within reach of the other, spent sleepless hours in a servant's room in the Conde de Guadalmedina's mansion. As for Charles Stuart and Buckingham, they lodged in considerably greater comfort, and with every honor, in the home of the English ambassador. The following morning, when the news had spread and while the counselors of our lord and king, with the Conde de Olivares at their head, attempted to seek a way out of the diplomatic crisis, the people of Madrid gathered en masse before the House of Seven Chimneys to cheer the daring traveler.
Charles Stuart was young, ardent, and optimistic. He had recently turned twenty-two, and, with that aplomb the young have in copious supply, he was as sure of the seductiveness of his gesture as he was of the love of an infanta whom he had never met. He was similarly sure, counting on our reputation for being gentlemanly and hospitable, that the Spanish, along with his lady, would be conquered by such a gallant gesture. And in that he was correct.
