I myself was among the curious lining the street, and I realized that the spectacle was the pinnacle of elegance and refinement, with the cream of Madrid decked out in their finery; but at the same time, because the visitors were still officially incognito, everyone was acting normally, as if this were a day like any other. The prince, Buckingham, the English ambassador, and the Conde de Gondomar, our diplomat for London, took up a place at the Guadalajara gate, in a closed coach—an invisible coach, for express orders had been issued not to cheer or note its presence—and from that vantage Charles watched as the carriages carrying the royal family rolled by. In one of them, beside our beautiful twenty-year-old queen, Isabel of Bourbon, was the Infanta, dona Maria. At last the Prince of Wales caught a glimpse of the blonde, pretty, circumspect girl she was in her youth. She was wearing a satiny brocade gown and, around her wrist, the blue ribbon that identified her to her suitor. Parading up and down Calle Mayor and the Prado, the carriage passed before the Englishmen three times that afternoon, and although the prince caught only glimpses of blue eyes and a head of golden hair adorned with plumes and precious stones, it was reported that he was immediately in thrall to our infanta.
And that must have been true, because he stayed on in Madrid for several months, seeking her hand as his wife while the king entertained him like a brother and the Conde de Olivares played him like a torero plays a bull, always with the greatest diplomacy. The advantage for Spain was that as long as there was hope of a marriage, the English stopped thumbing their noses at us while their pirates, their corsairs, their Dutch friends—the whole mutual ass-wiping lot—picked off our galleons returning from the Indies. So, we made merry as long as it lasted.
Ignoring the counsel of the Conde de Guadalmedina, Captain Alatriste did not raise a trail of dust getting out of town, or try to hide from anyone. I have recounted, in the previous chapter, how on the very morning that Madrid learned of the arrival of the Prince of Wales, the captain, as calm as you please, strolled back and forth in front of the House of Seven Chimneys. I even ran into him in the crowd on Calle Mayor in the midst of that festive Sunday rua, staring pensively at the Englishmen's carriage. True, the brim of his hat was pulled low over his face, and the concealing folds of his cape were carefully arranged. After all, neither courtesy nor courage demands sharing one's secrets with the town crier.
Although the captain had not told me anything of his adventure, I was well aware that something had happened. The next night he had sent me to sleep at La Lebrijana's house, under the pretext that he was expecting guests in regard to a certain business dealing. But later I learned that he had spent the night awake, with two loaded pistols, a sword, and a dagger at his side. Nothing had happened, however, and with the light of dawn he lay down and slept the sleep of the just.
That was how I found him when I returned in the morning; the lamp had burned down, and was smoking, and he was sprawled across the bed, still in his wrinkled outergarments, his weapons within reach, breathing loudly and regularly through his mouth, an obstinate frown on his face.
Captain Alatriste was a fatalist. Perhaps his status as a former soldier—having fought in Flanders and the Mediterranean after running away from school to enlist as a page and drummer at the age of thirteen—was the reason he faced risk, misfortune, uncertainty, and the vagaries of a harsh and difficult life with the stoicism of one accustomed to expect nothing more. His nature was well defined in a description the French Marechal de Grammont would later write of the Spanish: "Courage comes quite naturally to them, as does patience in their labors and assurance in adversity.... Their gentleman soldiers rarely are amazed when things go badly, and they console themselves with the hope that soon their good fortune will return." Or what a Frenchwoman, Madame d'Aulnoy, once said: "You see them exposed to the affronts of weather and in extreme misery, yet despite all that, braver, haughtier, and prouder than they are amid opulence and prosperity."
God knows that all this is true, and I, who knew such times, and some even worse that came later, give good witness to its truth. As for Diego Alatriste, he carried his hauteur and pride inside, and exhibited them only in his bullheaded silences. I have said already that unlike many braggarts who twirl their mustaches and talk loudly on street corners and at court, the captain was never heard to preen on the subject of his long military career. But sometimes, over a jug of wine, old comrades-in-arms dusted off stories about him, and I listened avidly. For to me in my young life, Diego Alatriste was the closest copy I had of the father who had fallen honorably in the wars of our lord and king. The captain was one of those small, tough, adamant men with whom Spain was always so well supplied, in good times and in bad, and to whom Calderon referred—and may my master Alatriste, be he in glory, or elsewhere, forgive me that I so often quote Don Pedro Calderon instead of his beloved Lope—when he wrote:
... they stand foursquare, Stalwart, stolid, whether well or poorly paid. They have never known the vile shadow of fear, And though haughty, come to any man's aid. They are firm in the face of the worst danger, And rebel only when addressed in anger.
I remember one episode that especially impressed me, more than anything because of how clearly it showed the nature of Captain Alatriste's character. Juan Vicuna, the one who had been a sergeant in the horse guard of our regiments during the disaster among the dunes at Nieuwpoort—heavy-hearted the mother who had a son there—several times described the defeat suffered by the Spanish by laying out the battle lines on the table in the Tavern of the Turk, using hunks of bread and jugs of wine to demonstrate. He, my father, and Diego Alatriste had been among the fortunate who saw the sun set on that ill-fated day, something that cannot be said of five thousand of his compatriots, including a hundred and fifty officers and captains whose hides were tanned by the Dutch, English, and French. Although those countries often fought among themselves, they were quick enough to join together when it came to shoving it up our asses.
In Nieuwpoort, everything went their way: our field commander, Don Gaspar Zapena, was dead, and Admiral de Aragon and other principal commanders captured. Our troops were in disarray, and Juan Vicuna, who had lost all his officers, and was himself wounded in one arm, which he would lose to gangrene several weeks later, retired with his decimated companies, along with the remaining foreign allied troops. And Vicuna recounted that when he looked back for the.last time, before putting on all speed to retreat, he saw the veteran Tercio Vie jo de Cartagena— which was the company of my father and Alatriste— attempting to quit a corpse-strewn battlefield through an impenetrable wall of enemies, who with harquebuses and muskets and artillery were making lace of the Spanish soldiers. There were dead, dying, and fleeing soldiers as far as the eye could see, Vicuna said.
And in the midst of the disaster, under the blazing sun reflecting dazzling light off the dunes, amid howling wind and swirling sand that cloaked them in smoke and gunpowder, were the companies of the Tercio Vie jo, bristling with pikes, standing in square formation around flags shredded by gunfire, and spitting musket balls in all four directions. Amazingly, they were retreating at a measured pace, without breaking ranks, dauntless, closing every breach opened by an enemy artillery that did not dare come any closer to attack. On higher ground, the soldiers calmly consulted with their officers, and then resumed their march without missing a beat, terrifying even in defeat, as tightly organized and collected as if they were on parade, moving at the tempo set by the slow tattoo of their drums.