The Sun Over Breda

“If it please you, would you tell me your name?”

The Valencian, who was unfastening a jerkin with as many rips and tears as the captain’s shirt, gave a surly nod. His eyes never left his adversary’s blade.

“My name is Garcia de Candau.”

“A pleasure.” Alatriste had put his left hand behind him, and in it now glinted the Vizcaina, his dagger with the shepherd’s crook guards. “Mine…”

“I know who you are,” the other interrupted. “You are that charlatan captain who gives himself a title he does not possess.”

Atop the embankment, Alatriste’s men looked at each other. The wine had given the Valencian some nerve after all. Those familiar with Diego Alatriste knew that if the man were hoping to get out of this with nothing more than a wound or two and a few weeks on his back, wading into those deep waters was a fatal card to play. We all watched expectantly, determined not to lose a single moment.

Then I saw that Diego Alatriste was smiling. I had lived with him long enough to know that smile: a grimace beneath his mustache, a funereal omen, bloodthirsty as a weary wolf once again preparing for the kill but without passion and without hunger, simply doing its job.

As they pulled the Valencian onto land, blood stained the calm waters of the canal around him. Everything had been done in accord with the rules of fencing and of decency, man to man, feet set, swords slashing, daggers playing, until Captain Alatriste’s blade entered where it was wont. And when questions arose about that death—amid cards, quarrels, and slaughtering knives, three others were dispatched that day, along with half a dozen wounded—the witnesses, all soldiers of our lord and king, and men whose word was trusted, said straight out that the Valencian had fallen into the canal after drinking himself senseless, wounding himself with his own weapon. So the chief bailiff of the tercio, privately relieved, declared the matter closed and bade everyone to go tend his roses. As if that wasn’t enough, that very night the Dutch attacked. And the bailiff, the colonel, the soldiers, Captain Alatriste, and I as well had—God knows it—more urgent things to think about.

5. THE LOYAL INFANTRY

The enemy attacked in the middle of the night, and the men at the “forlorn hope” postings were precisely that, without hope, slaughtered without even the time to flick an eyelash. Informed by his spies, Maurice of Nassau had seized the opportunity offered by the churning waters of the mutiny. Planning to install a relief unit of Dutch and English troops in Breda, he had approached Oudkerk from the north with large numbers of infantry and cavalry, and in their progress they had wreaked havoc and destruction at our advance posts. The Cartagena tercio, along with Don Carlos Soest’s Walloon infantry detachment, which was camped nearby, received the order to intercept the Hollanders and hold them back until our General Spinola could organize the counterattack. So in the middle of the night we were routed from sleep by drums and fifes and calls to collect our weapons. No one who has not lived such moments can imagine the clamor and confusion: lit torches illuminating running, pushing, startled figures, their faces serene, grave, terrorized. There were contradictory orders, captains shouting, sergeants hastily lining up rows of half-asleep, half-dressed soldiers and trying to get them outfitted for battle. All this chaos played out against the deafening rat-a-tat-tat of drums from the camp to the town, people scrambling to their windows and up on the walls, camps being struck, whinnying horses maddened by hands conveying the threat of combat. Battle-torn banners were drawn from their sheaths and unfurled to ripple in the breeze: crosses of Burgundy, bars of Aragon, quarters with castles and lions and chains, all rippling in the red light of torches and bonfires.

Captain Bragado’s company was among the first to march off, leaving behind the fires of the fortified town and camp and plunging into darkness along a dike bordering vast salt marshes and peat bogs. The word ran down the line of soldiers that we were marching to the Ruyter mill, a place the Dutch would have to pass en route to Breda because the land was narrow there, and according to what we’d been told, it was not possible to ford the river anywhere else. I was walking with the other mochileros from Diego Alatriste’s company, carrying his and Sebastian Copons’s harquebuses. I stayed close behind them, for I was also carrying a store of powder and balls and part of their supplies. Despite the dubious privilege of being loaded like a mule, this daily exercise had the benefit of strengthening my arms and legs. We Spaniards always do find a way to shrug off our troubles: From every ill some good will come, or vice versa.

Well, my brothers and senores,you know without my explanationan honor is never, ever, wonexcept with extreme extenuation.

The march was not easy in that murky light, for the moon was new and almost always hidden behind the clouds, so now and again some soldier would stumble, or the line would stop and you would bump into the person ahead of you, and then all along the dike the “’Pon my lifes” and “Pardiezes” erupted like a hailstorm of shot. My master was, as usual, a silent silhouette I followed like the shadow of a shadow. As we walked along, my head and my heart were filled with conflicting emotions: on one hand, a youth’s normal excitement about imminent action, but on the other, misgivings about the darkness and the prospect of battling a substantial number of enemies on open ground. Perhaps that was why it had made such an impression on me when, still in Oudkerk and just as the tercio had fallen in by the torchlight, even the most vocal nonbelievers had taken a moment to kneel and bare their heads as Chaplain Salanueva went up and down the rows giving us general absolution, just in case. For although the padre was a sullen and stupid priest who in his cups always tangled his Latin, he was, after all, the closest thing to a holy man we had. In any case, one thing does not cancel the other, and in a bad situation our soldiers always preferred an Ego te absolvo from a sinner’s hand to heading toward the next world with nothing to cover their sins.

One detail disturbed me greatly, however, and from the comments I heard around me, the veteran soldiers had also given it some thought. As we crossed one of the bridges near the dike, we saw by the light of some lanterns that sappers—those entrusted with disarming the mines—with axes and mattocks were preparing to tear down the bridge behind us, no doubt to deprive the Dutch of a passage through that area. However, that also meant that we ourselves could not expect reinforcements from the rear. And also, if it eventually came to “every man for himself,” it would be impossible to retreat in that direction. There were other bridges, no doubt, but imagine, Your Mercies, the effect that had on us as we marched toward the enemy in that black night.

Nevertheless, with or without a bridge behind us, we reached the Ruyter mill before dawn. From there you could hear the distant bursts of shots as our most advanced harquebusiers kept the Dutch entertained. A bonfire was burning, and in its splendor we could see the miller and his family, a woman and four very young children, all frightened and in their nightclothes, who had been driven from their home and were watching, powerless, as soldiers broke down doors and windows, fortified the upper floor, and piled up demolished furnishings to form a bulwark. As the flames reflected off helmets and corselets, the children sobbed from terror of those rough men clad in steel, and the miller held his head in his hands, watching as his livelihood was ruined, his property devastated, and no one was moved in the least by his fate. In war, tragedy becomes routine, and the soldier’s heart is hardened as much by the misfortune of others as by his own. As for the mill, our colonel had chosen it as a lookout and command post, and we could see don Pedro de la Daga in the doorway, conferring with the Walloon commander, each surrounded by his principal officers and flag bearers. From time to time they turned to look toward the distant fires a half league or so away as well as the hamlets burning in the distance, where the main body of the Dutch seemed to be concentrated.

We were made to march on a little farther, leaving the mill behind, and the companies spread out in the darkness among the hedgerows and beneath the trees, walking through tall wet grass that soaked us to the knees.