But let us return to my own troubles. As I was saying, I spent the whole afternoon near the palace, and in the end, my determination was rewarded, albeit only in part, for the gates finally opened, the Burgundy archers formed a guard of honor, and the king and queen in person—accompanied by the nobility and the authorities of Seville—walked the short distance to the Cathedral. The young and very beautiful Queen Isabel nodded graciously to the crowd. Sometimes she smiled with that peculiarly French charm that did not always quite fit with the rigid etiquette of the Spanish court. She was carrying a gold rosary and a small prayerbook decorated with mother-of- pearl, and was dressed according to the Spanish fashion in a gold-embroidered costume of blue satin with sleeves slashed to reveal an underlayer of silver cloth, and draped over head and shoulders she wore an exquisite white lace mantilla sewn with pearls. Arm-in-arm with her walked the equally youthful king, Philip IV, as fair, pale, stern- faced, and inscrutable as ever. He was wearing a costume made of silver-gray velvet, with a neat Walloon collar, a gold Agnus Dei medallion studded with diamonds, a golden sword, and a hat topped with white feathers. The queen’s pleasant demeanor and friendly smile were in marked contrast to her august husband’s solemn presence, for he still conformed to the grave Burgundian model of behavior brought from Flanders by the Emperor Charles and which meant that—apart from when he was actually walking, of course—he never moved foot, hand, or head but always kept his gaze directed upward as if the only person to whom he had to justify himself was God. No one, either in public or in private, had ever seen him lose his perfect composure and no one ever would. On that afternoon, I could never have dreamed that life would later present me with the opportunity to serve and escort the king at a very difficult time for both him and for Spain, and I can state categorically that he always maintained that same imperturbable—and ultimately legendary—sangfroid. Not that he was a disagreeable king; he was extremely fond of poetry, plays, and other literary diversions, of the arts, and of gentlemanly pursuits. Neither did he lack personal courage, although he never set foot on a battlefield except from afar and years later, during the war with Catalonia; however, when it came to his great passion, hunting, he often ran real risks and even killed wild boar on his own. He was a consummate horseman, and once, as I have recounted before, he won the admiration of the people by dispatching a bull in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid with a single shot from a harquebus. His failings were two: a certain weakness of character that led him to leave the business of the monarchy entirely in the hands of the count-duke, and his unbounded liking for women, which once—as I will describe on another occasion—very nearly cost him his life. Otherwise, he never had the grandeur or the energy of his great-grandfather the emperor or the tenacious intelligence of his grandfather Philip II; but although he devoted far too much time to his own amusements, indifferent to the clamor of a hungry population, to the anger of ill-governed territories and kingdoms, to the fragmentation of the empire he had inherited, and to Spain’s military and maritime ruin, it is fair to say that his kindly nature never provoked any feelings of personal hostility, and right up until his death, he was loved by the people, who attributed most of these misfortunes to his favorites, his ministers, and his advisors, in a Spain that was, at the time, far too large, beleaguered by far too many enemies, and so subject to base human nature that not even the risen Christ would have been capable of preserving it intact.
In the cortege I spotted the Conde-Duque de Olivares, cutting as imposing a figure as ever, both physically and in the way his every gesture and look exuded absolute power; also present was the elegant young son of the Duque de Medina Sidonia, the Conde de Niebla, who was accompanying Their Majesties, along with the flower of Seville’s nobility. The count was then only twenty years old or so, and a long way from the time when, as ninth Duque de Medina Sidonia, hounded by the enmity and envy of Olivares and weary of the crown’s rapacious demands on his prosperous estates—whose value had increased because of Sanlucar de Barrameda’s role in the route to and from the Indies—he was drawn into a plot with Portugal to turn Andalusia into an independent kingdom, a conspiracy that brought him dishonor, ruin, and disgrace. Behind him came a large retinue of ladies and gentlemen, including the queen’s ladies-in-waiting. And as I searched among them, my heart turned over, because Angelica de Alquezar was there too, exquisitely dressed in yellow velvet trimmed with gold braid, and daintily holding up her skirt, which was held out stiffly by an ample farthingale. Beneath her fine lace mantilla, the same golden ringlets that had brushed my face only hours before gleamed in the afternoon sun. I tried frantically to push my way through the crowd to reach her but was prevented from doing so by the broad back of a Burgundian guard. Thus Angelica passed by only a few steps away without seeing me. I tried to catch her blue eyes, but she moved off without reading in mine the mixture of reproach and scorn and love and madness troubling my mind.
But let us change scenes again, for I promised to tell you about our visit to the royal prison and about Nicasio Ganzua’s final supper. Ganzua was a prince among outlaws, a notorious ruffian from the quarter known as La Heria, a fine example of the criminal classes of Seville, and much admired by his fellow ruffians. The next day, to the discordant sound of drums and preceded by a cross, he was to be marched from the prison to have a rope placed around his neck, a rope that would rob him of his final breath. For this reason, the most illustrious members of that brotherhood of the blade were gathering—with all the requisite gravity, stoicism, and solemnity—to join him for a final supper. This unusual way of bidding farewell to a comrade was known, in criminal jargon, as
A dozen or so inebriated male voices were softly singing these words when, at the first watch, a constable —whose hand had been greased and spirits lifted with Alatriste’s bribe of a silver piece of eight—led us to the infirmary, which is where they put any prisoners about to be executed. Far better pens than mine have described the picaresque life lived within the prison’s three gates, barred windows, and dark corridors, and the curious reader wishing to know more should turn to don Miguel de Cervantes, Mateo Aleman, or Cristobal de Chaves. I will merely relate what I saw on that first visit, when the doors had been closed, and the prisoners who enjoyed the favor of the mayor or of the prison guards and were allowed to come and go as they pleased were all back snug in their cells—apart, that is, from the even more privileged few who, by reason of social position or wealth, could sleep wherever they chose. Wives, whores, and relatives had also left the building, and the four taverns and inns that served the prison parish—wine courtesy of the prison governor and water courtesy of the innkeeper—were closed until the following day, as were the gaming tables in the courtyard and the stalls selling food and vegetables. In short, this miniature Spain had gone to sleep, along with the bugs in the walls and the fleas in the blankets, even in the very best cells, which prisoners with the wherewithal could rent for six
On our way to the supper, we had an unexpected encounter. We had just walked down one long, railinged corridor and past the women’s prison—on the left as one entered—when we came to a room that was temporary home to those about to be sent to the galleys. A few inmates were standing there behind the bars, chatting. They peered out at us. A large torch on the wall lit up that part of the corridor, and by its light one of the men inside recognized my master.
“Either I’m blind drunk,” he said, “or that’s Captain Alatriste.”
We paused. The man who had spoken was very tall and burly, and he had thick, black eyebrows that met in the middle. He was wearing a filthy shirt and breeches made of rough cloth.
“Ye gods, Cagafuego,” said the captain, “what are you doing in Seville?”
In his delight and surprise, the giant opened his huge mouth and beamed from ear to ear, revealing, in place of an upper set of teeth, only a black hole.
“As you can see, they’re packing me off to the galleys. I’ve got six years of pounding the waves to look forward to.”
“The last time I saw you, you were safe in San Gines church.”
“Oh, that was a long time ago,” said Bartolo Cagafuego with a stoical shrug. “You know what life’s like.”
“And what crime are you paying for this time?”
