VI. THE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES
The next morning Madrid awakened to the incredible news. Charles Stuart, cub of the English lion, impatient with the pace of matrimonial negotiations with the Infanta dona Maria, sister of our King Philip the Fourth, had with his friend Buckingham conceived this extraordinary and preposterous project of traveling to Madrid, incognito, to meet his future bride. In so doing, he hoped to transform the cold diplomatic exchanges that had been languishing for months in the chancelleries into a novel of chivalric love.
The marriage between the Anglican prince and the Catholic princess had at this point become a complicated imbroglio in which ambassadors, diplomats, ministers, foreign governments, and even His Holiness the Roman Pope were caught up. The pope would have to authorize the union and was, of course, angling for the largest slice of this tasty pie. So, impatient that no one was flushing his partridge—or whatever those accursed English hunt—the Prince of Wales, seconded by Buckingham, had with his boyish imagination devised a plan to hasten negotiations. Between them they had plotted, confident that traveling to Spain without notice or protocol would immediately conquer the Infanta, and they would carry her off to England before the astonished gaze of all of Europe, and with the applause and approval of the Spanish and English peoples.
That, more or less, was the heart of the matter. Once King James's initial resistance had been overcome, he gave both youths his benediction and authorized them to set out. Though the risk of his son's undertaking was great—an accident, failure, or a Spanish rebuff would put England's honor on the line—the advantages of achieving a happy ending balanced the risk. First of all, to have the monarch of the nation that was still the most powerful in the world as brother-in-law to his heir was not a small thing. In addition, the marriage, desired by the English court but received more coolly by the Conde de Olivares and the ultra-Catholic counselors of the King of Spain, would put an end to the old enmity between the two nations. Consider, Your Mercies, that barely thirty years had gone by since the defeat of the Invincible Armada; and you know how that went, with cannon shot here and the briny deep there. Yes, the Devil takes all, in that fatal arm-wrestling contest between our good King Don Philip the Second and that redheaded harpy named Elizabeth of England, harborer of Protestants, bastards, and pirates, and better known as the Virgin Queen, though be damned if it is possible to imagine her Virgin anything.
The fact is that a wedding between the young heretic and our infanta—who was no Venus but was not all that bad, if you go by how Diego Velazquez painted her a little later, young and blonde, a lady... with that very Hapsburg lip, of course—would peacefully open the ports of commerce in the West Indies to England, resolving the burning problem of the Palatinate in favor of. the British. That is a story I do not choose to go into here, because that is what history tomes are for.
So that is how the cards had been dealt the night that I was sleeping like a dormouse on my pallet in Calle del Arcabuz, unaware of what was brewing, while Captain Alatriste, with one hand on the grip of his pistol, and his sword within reach of the other, spent sleepless hours in a servant's room in the Conde de Guadalmedina's mansion. As for Charles Stuart and Buckingham, they lodged in considerably greater comfort, and with every honor, in the home of the English ambassador. The following morning, when the news had spread and while the counselors of our lord and king, with the Conde de Olivares at their head, attempted to seek a way out of the diplomatic crisis, the people of Madrid gathered en masse before the House of Seven Chimneys to cheer the daring traveler.
Charles Stuart was young, ardent, and optimistic. He had recently turned twenty-two, and, with that aplomb the young have in copious supply, he was as sure of the seductiveness of his gesture as he was of the love of an infanta whom he had never met. He was similarly sure, counting on our reputation for being gentlemanly and hospitable, that the Spanish, along with his lady, would be conquered by such a gallant gesture. And in that he was correct.
Yes, if the nearly half-century reign of our good and ineffective monarch Don Philip the Fourth, mistakenly called the Great—all chivalry and hospitality, mass on holidays, parading around with splendor and sword and empty belly—had filled Spain's coffers and put pikemen in Flanders, it is also true that I, my captain Alatriste, the Spanish in general, and poor Spain in all its kingdoms had danced to a different tune. And that infamous period was called the Siglo de Oro? What Golden Age, eh? The truth is that those of us who lived and suffered through it saw little gold and barely enough silver. Sterile sacrifice, glorious defeats, corruption, rogues, misery, and shame, that we had up to the eyebrows. But then when one goes and looks at a painting by Diego Velazquez, listens to verses by Lope or Calderon, reads a sonnet by Francisco de Quevedo, one says to oneself that perhaps it was all worthwhile.
But back to my tale. I was telling you that the news of the adventure raced around the city like a trail of gunpowder, and won the heart of all Madrid, though for our lord and king and the Conde de Olivares, as we later learned, the uninvited arrival of the heir to the English crown had hit them like lead shot between the eyes. Protocol was maintained, of course, and everything was all consideration and compliments. And of the skirmish in the lane, not so much as a whisper.
Diego Alatriste learned the particulars when the Conde de Guadalmedina returned home early in the morning, happy over the success he had just scored by escorting the two young men and being the recipient of their gratitude and that of the English ambassador. After the obligatory courtesies in the House of Seven Chimneys, Guadalmedina had been urgently summoned to the Royal Palace, where he brought the king and first minister up-to-date on the happenings. Bound by his word, the count could not reveal the details of the ambush. But without incurring the displeasure of the king, on the one hand, or betraying his word as a gentleman, on the other, Alvaro de la Marca knew how to communicate enough details through gestures, hints, and silences, that the monarch and his prime minister comprehended, to their horror, how close the two imprudent travelers had come to being filleted in a dark lane in Madrid.
The full story, or at least some of the key points that were enough to give Diego. Alatriste an idea of who his shadowy employers were, came from Guadalmedina's mouth. After spending half the morning traveling back and forth between the House of Seven Chimneys and the palace, he brought fresh, though not especially calming, news for the captain.
"In truth, it is very simple," the count summarized. "For some time, England has been pressing for this marriage, but Olivares and the Council, which is still under his influence, are in no hurry. That an infanta of Castile should marry an Anglican prince brought the smell of sulfur to their nostrils. The king is young, and in this, as in everything else, he lets himself be guided by Olivares. Those within the close personal circle of the king believe that the prime minister has no intention of giving his stamp of approval to the wedding—unless the Prince of Wales should convert to Catholicism. That is why Olivares has been dragging his feet, and that is also why the young Charles decided to take the bull by the horns and present us with a fait accompli."
Alvaro de la Marca was sitting at the green-velvet-covered table, wolfing down a small snack. It was mid-morning, and they were in the same room in which he had received Diego Alatriste the night before. The aristocrat was giving his devoted attention to a chicken empanada, meat pies being one of his favorite dishes, and drinking wine from a small silver jug; his diplomatic and social success the night before had clearly whetted his appetite. He had invited Alatriste to join him at table, but the captain rejected the invitation. He remained standing, leaning against the wall, watching his protector eat. Alatriste was dressed to go out; his cape, sword, and hat were on a nearby chair, and his unshaven face showed traces of his sleepless night.