“Not anymore. ‘Let him read it, then take it straight back’—those were my orders. It was just so that you could see it with your own eyes—her hand and her signature.”
“And what are you going to do with it?”
“Burn it—now.”
He took it from the captain, who put up no resistance. Then, looking around, he decided to take advantage of the oil lamp positioned below the pious image a herbalist had placed outside his door, alongside a stuffed bat and a lizard. He held the paper to the flame.
“She knows what’s for the best, and so does her husband,” he said, returning to the captain’s side holding the now burning letter between his fingers. “I expect someone dictated it to them.”
They watched the flames consume the letter, then Saldana dropped it and stamped on the ashes.
“The king’s a young man,” he said, as if this justified many things. Alatriste stared at him hard.
“And he is the king,” he added in a neutral voice.
Saldana was frowning now, one hand resting on the butt of one of his pistols. With the other hand, he was scratching his grizzled beard.
“Do you know something, Diego? Sometimes, like you, I really miss the mud and shit of Flanders.”
Guadalmedina Palace stood on the corner of Calle del Barquillo and Calle de Alcala, next to the Monastery of San Hermenegildo. The large door stood open, and so Diego Alatriste walked through into the ample hallway, where a liveried porter came to meet him. He was an old servant whom the captain knew well.
“I would like to see the count.”
“Were you asked to come, sir?” asked the porter politely.
“No.”
“I will see if His Excellency can receive you.”
The porter withdrew, and the captain paced up and down before the wrought-iron gate that gave onto the immaculate garden with its lush fruit trees and ornamental shrubs, its stone cupids and classical statuary standing amongst the ivy and the clumps of flowers. He used the time to tidy himself up, straighten his collar, and fasten his doublet. He did not know what Alvaro de la Marca’s reaction would be when they met face-to-face, although he assumed the count would be expecting the words of apology he had already prepared. The captain—as the count knew very well—was not a man to retract words or swords, and both had been bandied about the night before. However, he himself, when he analyzed his conduct, was not sure that he had acted fairly toward the count, who was, after all, fulfilling his duties with the same thoroughness he had applied to his own duties on the battlefield. “The king is the king,” he reminded himself, “although there are kings and kings.” And each man decides out of conscience or self-interest how he will serve his king. Guadalmedina received his pay in the form of royal favors, whereas Diego Alatriste y Tenorio—albeit little, late, and badly—had earned his in the army, as a soldier of that same king, and of his father and grandfather. Besides, Guadalmedina, despite his elevated social position, his noble blood, his courtly manners, and the complicated circumstances in which they found themselves, was a wise and loyal man. They had occasionally taken up arms together against a common enemy, but the captain had also saved the count’s life in the Kerkennah Islands, and subsequently turned to him for help when there was that problem with the two Englishmen. During the incident involving the Inquisition, the count’s goodwill had again been proven, not to mention the matter of the Cadiz gold and the warnings given to don Francisco de Quevedo about Maria de Castro once she had piqued the royal fancy. Such things forged strong bonds—or so at least he hoped as he waited by the gate that led into the garden—bonds that might salvage the affection they both felt for each other. Then again, it might be that Alvaro de la Marca’s pride would not allow for any reconciliation at all: the nobility does not care to be ill-treated, and that wound to the count’s arm did not help matters. Alatriste was prepared to place himself entirely at the count’s disposition, even if this involved letting him stick a few inches of steel through him at a time and place of his choosing.
“His Excellency does not wish to receive you, sir.”
Diego Alatriste, who had been waiting, one hand on the hilt of his sword, was left dumbstruck by these words. The porter began ushering him out.
“Are you sure?”
The porter nodded scornfully, all trace of his earlier politeness gone.
“He recommends that you leave while you can.”
The captain was not a man to be easily shaken, but he could not help the wave of heat that rose to his face at finding himself so rudely treated. He shot another look at the porter, sensing that the latter was secretly enjoying his discomfiture. Then he took a deep breath and, repressing an urge to beat the man roundly with the flat of his sword, pulled his hat firmly down on his head, turned, and walked out into the street.
He walked blindly up Calle de Alcala, barely noticing where he was going, as if there were a red veil before his eyes. He was cursing and blaspheming under his breath. Several times, as he strode along, he collided with other passersby; however, when they protested—one man even made as if to take out his sword—these protests vanished as soon as they saw his face. In this manner, he crossed Puerta del Sol and got as far as Calle Carretas. He stopped outside the Tavern of the Rock where he read these words chalked on the door:
That same night, he killed a man. He chose him at random and in silence from among the other customers crowding the bar—all as drunk as he was. In the end, he slammed down a few coins on the wine-stained table and staggered out, followed by the stranger, a braggart who, along with two other men, was clearly determined to pick a fight, and all because Alatriste kept staring at him. The braggart—Alatriste never got his name—already had his sword unsheathed and was declaring loudly and coarsely to anyone who would listen that he wouldn’t be stared at like that by any bastard, be he from Spain or from the Indies. Once outside, keeping close to the wall, Alatriste walked as far as Calle de los Majadericos, and there, under cover of darkness and safe from prying eyes, he waited until the footsteps following him grew nearer. Then he took out his sword, confronted the man, and ran him through there and then, making no pretense at observing fencing etiquette. The man dropped to the ground, with a wound to the heart, before he could utter a word, while his companions ran for their lives, crying: “Murder! Murder!” Standing next to his victim’s corpse and leaning against the wall for support, his sword still in his hand, Alatriste vomited up all the wine he had drunk that night. Then he wiped the blade of his sword with the dead man’s cloak, wrapped himself in his own, and made his way to Calle de Toledo, taking shelter in the shadows.
Three days later, don Francisco de Quevedo and I were crossing the Segovia bridge to go to the Casa de Campo, where Their Majesties were staying and taking advantage of the good weather; the king devoted himself to hunting and the queen to walking, reading, and music. We rode over the bridge in a carriage drawn by two mules and, leaving behind us the Ermita del Angel and the beginning of the Camino de San Isidro, we proceeded along the right bank to the gardens that surrounded His Catholic Majesty’s country retreat. To one side of us grew tall pine woods, and on the other, across the Manzanares, lay Madrid in all its splendor: with its innumerable church and convent towers, its city walls built on the foundations of the former Arab fortifications, and high up, large and imposing, the Alcazar Real, with its Golden Tower like the prow of a galleon looking out over the slender Manzanares River, whose shores were dotted with the white clothes hung out to dry on the bushes by the washerwomen. It was, in short, a splendid scene, and in response to my admiring remarks, don Francisco smiled kindly and said:
“Oh, yes, it’s the center of the world all right—for the moment.”
I did not then understand the clear-sighted caution that lay behind this comment. As a young man, I was so dazzled by everything around me that I was incapable of imagining an end to the magnificence of the court, to our
