“Nearly so,” Alatriste replied in measured tones, “as Your Excellency does me the honor of recalling. But it was not my hour.”
The general studied the scars on the veteran’s weathered face. He had first spoken to Alatriste twenty years before, during his attempt to save the day at Sluys when, surprised by a cavalry charge, don Ambrosio had had to take refuge in the square formed by Alatriste and other soldiers. Alongside them, his rank forgotten, the illustrious Genoese had had to fight for his life on foot, using only sword and pistol, throughout an endless day. He had not forgotten that, and nor had Alatriste.
“So I see,” said Spinola. “And in those hedgerows of Fleurus, don Gonzalo de Cordoba told me that you fought like men of honor.”
“Don Gonzalo spoke the truth when he used the word
Spinola scratched his goatee, as if he had just remembered something.
“Did I not promote you to sergeant at that time?”
Alatriste slowly shook his head. “No, Excellency. The ‘sergeant’ came about in ’18, because Your Excellency remembered me from Sluys.”
“Then how is it that you are a foot soldier once again?”
“I lost my rank a year later, because of a duel.”
“Something serious?”
“A lieutenant.”
“Dead?”
“As a doornail.”
The general considered Alatriste’s words and then exchanged a look with the officers surrounding him. He frowned and made a move to walk on.
“As God is my witness,” he said, “I am surprised they didn’t hang you.”
“It was during the Maastrique mutiny, Excellency.”
Alatriste had spoken without a shred of emotion. The general stopped, thinking back.
“Ah, yes, I remember now.” The frown had disappeared, and he was smiling again. “The Germans and the colonel whose life you saved. And for that did I not grant you a warrant of eight
Again Alatriste shook his head.
“No, Excellency. That was for White Mountain. When, with Captain Bragado, who is standing over there today, we climbed behind Bucquoi up to the forts above. As for the
At that, don Ambrosio’s smile slipped from his face. He looked around with a distracted air.
“Well,” he concluded. “At any rate, I am pleased to have seen you again. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Alatriste smiled, though his face changed very little; a barely perceptible light glinted among the wrinkles about his eyes.
“I think not, Excellency. Today I am collecting six months of back pay, and I have no complaint.”
“Good. And this meeting between two old veterans has been pleasant, don’t you agree?” He had put out a hand as if to give Alatriste a friendly pat on the shoulder, but the captain’s steady and sardonic gaze appeared to dissuade him. “I am referring to you and me, of course.”
“Naturally, Excellency.”
“Soldier and, ahem, soldier.”
“Of course.”
Don Ambrosio again cleared his throat, smiled one last time, and looked ahead to the next group. In his mind he had already moved on.
“Good luck, Captain Alatriste.”
“Good luck, Excellency.”
The Marques de los Balbases, Captain-General of Flanders, continued on. The path to glory and posterity lay before him—though he did not know it, and we were the ones who would do all the hard work—through the magnum opus of Diego Velazquez, but it was also to be the pathway toward calumny and injustice dealt him by the adoptive country he had served so generously. Because while Spinola reaped victories for the king, who was ungrateful like all the kings the world has ever seen, enemies were cutting the ground from beneath his feet at court, far from the fields of battle, discrediting him before the monarch of languid gestures and pallid soul, who, good-natured but weak, always managed to find himself far from where honorable wounds were being received. Instead of adorning himself in the appurtenances of war, this king dressed for palace balls, even the country dances Juan de Esquivel taught in his academy. Only five years after the time we are speaking of, the man who stormed Breda, the intelligent and expert military strategist, the man of courage who loved Spain to the point of sacrifice, was to die ill and disillusioned. Don Francisco de Quevedo would write a poem expressing Spain’s loss.
As reward for his noble endeavors he received the standard wages our land of Cains—more stepmother than mother, ever base and miserly—holds for those who love her and serve her well: oblivion, the poison engendered by envy, ingratitude, and dishonor. And the greatest irony was that poor don Ambrosio would die with only an enemy to console him, Julio Mazarino, who, like him, was an Italian by birth, a future cardinal and minister of France, and the
