nothing but naked corpses. I was still in the chase, keeping up with those in the vanguard, not feeling the exhaustion of the day, as if fury and desire for revenge had given me strength to go on to the end of the world. I was—and may God forgive me if it be His wish—hoarse from yelling and red with the blood of those wretched Dutch. A pink dusk was closing over the burning villages on the far side of the forest, and there was no canal, no path, no road along the dike that was free of the dead. At that point, bone-weary, we stopped by a small cluster of five or six houses where even the domestic animals had been killed. A group of Dutch stragglers had hidden there, and finishing them off took the last moments of light. Finally, in the reddish glow of burning roofs, we calmed down, little by little, our pouches stuffed with booty, and here and there men began to drop to the ground, suddenly seized by untold fatigue, breathing like beaten animals. Only a fool maintains that victory is joy. As our senses slowly returned we fell silent, avoiding one another’s eyes, as if ashamed of our filthy hair standing on end, our black, strained faces, reddened eyes, the crust of blood drying on our clothing and weapons. Now the only sound was the sputtering of the fire and creaking of beams collapsing among the flames, but occasionally from the night around us came shouts and gunfire from those who continued the kill.
Bruised and battered, I squatted down by the side of a house, my back against the wall. My eyes were tearing; I was breathing with difficulty and was tortured by thirst. In the light of the fire I saw Curro Garrote knotting into a cloth the rings, chains, and silver buttons he had scavenged from the dead. Mendieta was stretched out face down; you would have thought he was as stone-cold dead as the Hollander corpses strewn about were it not for his raucous snores. Other Spaniards were sitting in groups or alone, and among them I thought I recognized Captain Bragado with one arm in a sling. Gradually, low-pitched voices reached my ears, mostly queries about the fate of some comrade or other. Someone asked about Llop and was answered by silence. A few men made small fires to roast strips of meat they had cut from the dead farm animals, and soldiers slowly began to congregate around the flames. After a while they were talking in normal voices, and then someone said something, a comment or a jest, that drew a laugh. I remember the profound impression that laugh made on me, for I had come to believe that at the end of that long day men’s laughter had vanished forever from the face of the earth.
I turned toward Captain Alatriste and saw that he was looking at me. He was sitting against the wall a few paces away, with his legs drawn up and his arms around his knees. He was still holding his harquebus. Sebastian Copons was by his side, his head resting against the wall, his sword between his legs. His face was marred by the large dark scab on his temple that had been revealed when his bandage slipped down around his neck. The men’s outlines were etched against the glow from a house burning nearby, brighter from time to time as the flames leaped and played. Diego Alatriste’s eyes, gleaming in the firelight, were observing me with a kind of quizzical intensity, as if he were trying to read inside me. I was both ashamed and proud, exhausted yet with an energy that made my heart pound, horrified, sad, bitter, but happy to be alive. And I swear to Your Mercies that following a battle, a man can harbor all these sensations and emotions, and many more, at the same time. The captain kept watching me in silence, more a scrutiny than anything else, to the point that finally I began to feel uncomfortable. I had expected praise, an encouraging smile, something that expressed his esteem for my having conducted myself like a man. That was why I was disconcerted by that observation in which I could discern nothing other than the imperturbable absorption I had seen on other occasions: an expression, or absence of expression, that I could never penetrate. Nor could I until many years later when one day, now a full-grown man, I was surprised to find that I too had, or thought I had, that same gaze.
Uncomfortable, I decided to do something to break the tension. I stretched my aching body, put the German sword in my belt beside the dagger, and got to my feet.
“Shall I look for something to eat and drink, Captain?”
Light from the flames danced on his face. It was several moments before he answered, and when he did he limited himself to a nod, his aquiline face long beneath the thick mustache. He never took his eyes from me as I turned and followed my shadow.
The conflagration outside cast its light though an open window, tingeing the walls with red. Everywhere the house was in chaos: broken furniture, scorched curtains on the floor, drawers upside down, scattered belongings. Rubble crunched beneath my feet as I walked back and forth looking for a cupboard or some larder not yet ransacked by our rapacious comrades. I remember the immense sadness that permeated that dark, plundered dwelling, the lives that had given warmth to its rooms now gone, the desolation and ruin of what once had been a hearth where undoubtedly a child had laughed and two adults had exchanged tender caresses and words of love. And so the curiosity of someone prowling at will through a place to which he would ordinarily not be invited gave way to a growing melancholy. I thought of my own home in Onate caught in the destruction of war, of my poor mother and little sisters fleeing, or perhaps worse, their rooms trampled through by some young foreigner who, like me, saw spread across the floor the broken, burned, humble remains of our memories and our lives. And with the selfishness natural in a soldier, I was happy to be in Flanders and not in Spain. I can assure Your Mercies that in the business of war, the misfortunes visited on foreigners are always of some consolation. And at such times, the person who has no one in the world, and who risks no fondness for anything but his own skin, is to be envied.
I found nothing worth the search. I stopped a moment to relieve myself against the wall and was buttoning my trousers when something stopped me short. I held my breath an instant, listening, and then I heard it again. It was a prolonged moan, a weak lament coming from the far end of a narrow corridor filled with debris. I might have thought it was an animal in pain except that from time to time I could hear a human timbre. So, quietly, I unsheathed my dagger—in such a narrow space my newly acquired sword was not manageable—and, back to the wall, I slipped closer to find out what it was.
There was enough light from the fires outside to light half the room, projecting shadows with reddish outlines onto a wall covered with a slashed tapestry. Beneath that hanging, propped in the niche between the wall and a battered armoire, slumped a man. The light glinting from his breastplate confirmed that he was a soldier and illuminated a long, blond, tangled head of hair filthy with mud and blood, very pale eyes, and a terrible burn that had left one whole side of his face raw. He was motionless, his eyes staring into the light coming through the window, and from his half-opened lips issued the lament I had heard from the corridor: a hushed, constant moaning interrupted at times by incomprehensible words spoken in a strange tongue.
I crept toward him, cautious, still holding the dagger and watching his hands to ascertain whether he was holding a weapon, though that poor wretch was not in any condition to hold a thing. He looked like a traveler sitting by the shore of the Styx, someone the boatman Charon had left behind, forgotten, on his last crossing. I crouched down beside him, examining him with curiosity; he seemed not to be aware I was there. He kept staring toward the window, motionless, uttering that interminable keening, those fragmented, unrecognizable words, even when I touched his arm with the tip of my dagger. His face was a frightening representation of Janus: one side reasonably intact, the other a pudding of raw flesh glittering with droplets of blood. His hands, too, had been burned. I had seen several dead Hollanders in the flaming stables at the back of the house, and I surmised that this man, wounded in the skirmish, had dragged himself through the smoldering embers to take refuge here.
There was no answer but his endless groans. I concluded that he was a young man, not much older than I, and by the breastplate and clothing, was one of the soldiers from the Light Horse that had charged us that morning near the Ruyter mill. Perhaps we had fought near each other when the Dutch and English attempted to break through our formation and we Spaniards desperately fought for our lives. War, I reasoned, took strange twists and turns, curious swings of fortune. Nevertheless, with the horror of the day behind me and the Dutch on the run, I felt neither hostility nor rancor. I had seen many Spaniards die that day but even more enemies. At the moment, the scales were balanced; this was a defenseless man, and I was sated with blood, so I put away my dagger and went outside to Captain Alatriste and the others.
“There is a man inside,” I said. “A soldier.”
