Captain Alatriste

If only, the captain thought, the execution that lay in store for him would not be by garrote. It was not that dangling at the end of a rope was his cup of tea, either, but at least it was better than being removed with an ignominious tourniquet squeezing tighter and tighter around his neck, his face contorted as he heard the executioner say, 'Forgive me, Your Mercy, I am only following orders.'

May Christ unleash a thunderbolt to incinerate all the spineless lackeys who were 'just following orders,' and take with them the bastards who gave the orders as well. Not to mention the obligatory handcuffs, brazier, judge, reporter, scribe, and executioner needed to obtain a proper confession before speeding your disjointed body toward Hell. Diego Alatriste did not sing well with a rope around his neck, so his last serenade would be long and painful. Given a choice, he would have preferred to end his days with steel, fighting. That was, after all, the decent way for a soldier to make his exit: Viva Espana! and all that, and little angels singing his way in Heaven, or wherever he was to go.

'But not many blessings are being handed out these days,' a worried Martin Saldana had whispered to him when he came to wake him at the prison that early morning and take him to the Alcazar.

'By my faith, it looks bad this time, Diego.'

'I have had it worse.'

'No. Not ever. The person who wants to see you allows no man to save himself by his sword.'

Worse, Alatriste had nothing to fight with. Even the slaughterer's knife in his boot had been taken from him when he was imprisoned after the row in the corral de comedias, when the intervention of the Englishmen had at least prevented him from being killed on the spot.

'En pas ahora este-umos '—we're even now—Charles of England had said when the guard arrived to separate the contenders, or protect him, which in reality was one and the same. And after sheathing his sword, he, along with Buckingham, had turned away, acting as if he were completely unaware of the applause of an admiring public. Don Francisco de Quevedo was allowed to go, by the personal order of the king, who apparently had been pleased with his latest sonnet. As for the five swordsmen, two escaped in the confusion, one had been carried off gravely wounded, and the other two were arrested at the same time as Alatriste and put in the cell next to his. As the captain left that morning with Saldana, he had passed by that same cell. Empty.

The Conde de Olivares continued to focus on his correspondence, and the captain looked toward the window, with somber hope. That out might save him from the executioner and shorten the process, although a thirty-foot fall from the window to the courtyard might not be enough; he might merely expose himself to the torment of ending up injured but alive, and hoisted onto the mule to hang, broken legs and all, which was not a pretty picture. And there was yet another problem: What if there was Someone up there after all? He would hold Alatriste's jumping to his death against him all through an afterlife no less unpleasant for being hypothetical.

So if the bugles were blowing Retreat! it was better to go having had the sacraments, and dispatched by another hand. Just in case. When all was said and done, he consoled himself, however painful, and however long it takes to die, in the end you are just as dead. And he who dies finds rest.

He was mulling over these happy thoughts when he became aware that the court favorite had finished his task and had turned his attention to him. Those fiery black eyes seemed to be taking in every detail. Alatriste, whose doublet and hose showed the signs of the night spent in a cell, regretted that he did not present a better appearance. A clean bandage over the slash on his forehead would have helped, and water to wash away the dried blood on his face.

'Have you seen me before, do you think?'

Olivares's question caught the captain unawares. A sixth sense, something like the sound a steel blade makes when drawn over a whetstone, warned him to display exquisite caution.

'No. Never.'

'Never?'

'I have said so, Excellency.' 'Not even during some public function?' 'Well . . .' the captain stroked his mustache, as if trying hard to remember. 'Perhaps ... in the Plaza Mayor, or at the Hieronymite convent . . . someplace like that.' He nodded with what passed as thoughtful honesty. 'That is possible, yes.'

Olivares held his eyes, impassive. 'No other time?'

'No, no other time.'

For a very brief instant the captain believed he glimpsed a smirk in the favorite's thick growth of beard. But he was never sure. Olivares had picked up one of the files on his table and was leafing through the pages distractedly.

'You served in Flanders and Naples, I see here. And against the Turks in the Levant, and on the Barbary coast. A long life as a soldier.'

'Since I was thirteen, Excellency.'

'Your title of captain is, I imagine, unearned?'

'Not officially. I never rose above the rank of sergeant, and I was relieved of that after a . . . scuffle.'

'Yes, that is what it says here.' The minister kept riffling through the documents. 'You quarreled with a lieutenant—in fact, you ran him through. I am surprised that you were not hanged for that.'

'They were going to, Excellency. But that same day in Maastricht our troops mutinied. They had not been paid for five months. I myself did not join them, fortunately, so I had the opportunity to defend Field Marshal Miguel de Orduna from his own soldiers.'

'You do not approve of mutinies?'

'I do not like to see officers murdered.'

His questioner arched an eyebrow peevishly. 'Not even those who intend to hang you?'

'One thing is one thing, and another, another.'

'To defend your field marshal, it says here, you put away another two or three with your sword.'