Thus, by dint of whistle and oar, we had traveled up the Guadalquivir and arrived in the most fascinating city, trading port, and marketplace in the world, a gold and silver galleon anchored between glory and misery, opulence and profligacy, capital of the Ocean Sea and of all the wealth brought by the annual treasure fleet from the Indies; a city populated by nobles, merchants, clerics, rogues, and alluring women; a city so rich, powerful, and beautiful that neither Tyre nor Alexandria in their day could have equaled it. Homeland and home to all who came to her, a place of inexhaustible marvels, a mother to orphans and a cloak for sinners, just like the Spain of those wretched and magnificent times, a place where poverty was everywhere, and yet a place where no one capable of scraping a living need ever be poor. Where everything was wealth, but where it took but a moment’s inattention to lose it all —as easily as one could lose one’s life.
We spent a long time at the inn, talking but without exchanging one word with the accountant Olmedilla; however, as soon as Olmedilla stood up to leave, Quevedo instructed us to go after him, following at a distance. It would be a good thing, he explained, for Captain Alatriste to familiarize himself with the man. We walked along Calle de Tintores, astonished at the number of foreigners frequenting the inns there, then we set off for Plaza de San Francisco and the Cathedral, and from there, through Calle del Aceite, we reached the Mint, near the Torre del Oro, where Olmedilla had some business to attend to. As you can imagine, I, wide-eyed, was busily taking everything in: the newly swept doorways where women were emptying out their washbowls or planting up pots with flowers; the shops selling soap, spices, jewels, and swords; the boxes of fruit outside the fruiterer’s; the gleaming basins that hung above the door of every barber; the street sellers; the ladies accompanied by their duennas; the men haggling; the grave-faced canons mounted on their mules; the black and Moorish slaves; the houses painted in red ocher and whitewash; the churches with their glazed tile roofs; the palaces; the orange and lemon trees; the crosses placed at the corners of streets to commemorate some violent death or simply to discourage passersby from relieving themselves . . . And even though it was still winter, everything glittered beneath a splendid sun that caused my master and don Francisco to fold up their cloaks and wear them slung crosswise over chest and shoulder or else to throw back their capes and undo the loops and buttons on their doublets. The knowledge that the king and queen were both in Seville only added to the natural beauty of the place, and that celebrated city and its more than one hundred thousand inhabitants bubbled with excitement and celebration. Unusually that year, King Philip IV was preparing to honor with his august presence the arrival of the treasure fleet, which would be bringing with it a fortune in gold and silver to be distributed—unfortunately, rather than fortunately, for us—to the rest of Europe and the world. The overseas empire that had been created a century before by Cortes, Pizarro, and other adventurers with few scruples and a great deal of pluck, with nothing to lose but their lives and with everything to gain, now provided a constant flow of wealth that allowed Spain to pay for the wars in which it was embroiled with half the known world, wars waged in defense of our military hegemony and of the one true religion, money that was even more necessary, were that possible in a country like ours, where—as I have said before—absolutely everyone gave himself airs, where work was frowned upon and commerce held in low esteem, and where the dream of every scoundrel was to be granted letters patent of nobility and thus live a life free from taxes and from work. Young men, understandably, preferred to try their fortune in the Indies or in Flanders rather than languish in Spain’s barren fields, at the mercy of an idle clergy, an ignorant, decadent aristocracy, and a corrupt government bureaucracy eager to suck the blood and the life out of them. It is said, and it is very true, that the moment when vice becomes the custom marks the death of a republic, for the dissolute person ceases to be considered loathsome, and all baseness becomes normal. It was thanks to the rich deposits in the Americas that Spain was able, for so long, to maintain an empire based on that abundance of gold and silver and on the quality of its coinage, which served both to pay the armies—when indeed they were paid—and to import foreign goods and products; for although we could send flour, oil, vinegar, and wine to the Indies, everything else came from abroad. This obliged us to go elsewhere for supplies, and our much-valued gold doubloons and our famous silver pieces of eight played a major role. We survived thanks to the vast quantities of coins and bars of gold that traveled from Mexico and Peru to Seville, whence they were immediately scattered throughout all the other countries of Europe and even the Orient, ending up as far away as India and China. The truth is that all this wealth benefitted everyone except the Spanish: since the Crown was always in debt, the money was spent before it even arrived; as soon as it was disembarked, the gold left Spain to be squandered in those lands where we were at war, vanished into the Genoese and Portuguese banks that were our creditors, and even into the hands of our enemies. To quote don Francisco de Quevedo:
The umbilical cord that kept our poor—and paradoxically rich—Spain breathing was the treasure fleet, which sailed the seas as much at risk from hurricanes as from pirates. This was why its arrival in Seville provoked indescribable celebration, for as well as the gold and silver destined for the king and for certain private individuals, it brought with it, too, cochineal, indigo, logwood, brazil-wood, wool, cotton, hides, sugar, tobacco, and spices, not forgetting chili, ginger, and Chinese silk brought from the Philippines via Acapulco. To this end our galleons sailed in convoy from New Spain and Tierra Firme as far as Cuba, where they formed one gigantic fleet. And it has to be said that during all that time, despite deprivation, disaster, and difficulty, the Spanish sailors carried out their work with great pride. Even at the very worst moments—when, for example, the Dutch captured an entire fleet—our ships continued to cross the sea at the cost of great effort and sacrifice, and except on certain unfortunate occasions, always managed to keep at bay the threat from the French, Dutch, and English pirates, in a struggle in which Spain fought alone against those three powerful nations, all set on having a share of the spoils.
“Not many bluebottles about,” commented Alatriste laconically.
This was true. The fleet was about to arrive, the king in person was honoring Seville with his presence, religious ceremonies and public celebrations were being organized, and yet there was hardly a catchpole or a constable to be seen in the streets. The few we passed were in groups, armed to the teeth, with more steel on them than a Basque foundry, and fearful even of their own shadow.
“There was an incident four days ago,” Quevedo told us. “The law officers tried to arrest a soldier on one of the galleys moored in Triana, but the other soldiers and conscripts went to his aid, and people were being knifed left, right, and center. In the end, the catchpoles managed to drag him off to jail, but the soldiers surrounded the place and threatened to set fire to it if they didn’t give them back their comrade.”
“And how did the matter end?”
“Since the prisoner had killed a constable, they hanged him from the railings before handing him back.” The poet chuckled as he described what had happened. “So now the soldiers are on the hunt for constables, and the constables only dare go about in gangs, and even then only very cautiously.”
“And what does the king have to say about it all?”
While the accountant Olmedilla was sorting out his business at the Mint, we stood in the shadow of the gateway known as the Postigo del Carbon, immediately below the Torre de la Plata. Quevedo pointed to the walls of the ancient Moorish castle that extended as far as the Cathedral’s immensely tall bell tower. The red-and-yellow uniforms of the Spanish guard stood out brightly against the battlements emblazoned with the king’s coat of arms, and little did we imagine that, many years later, I myself would wear that uniform. More sentinels bearing halberds
