"The Cartagena tercio reached Nieuwpoort at nightfall," Vicuna concluded, using his only hand to move the jugs and last pieces of bread. "Always in step and unhurried, just seven hundred left of the fifteen hundred and fifty who had begun the battle. Lope Balbuena and Diego Alatriste were with them, black with gunpowder, thirsty, exhausted. They had been saved by not breaking formation, by keeping their heads in the midst of the general disaster. And do Your Mercies know what Diego replied when I ran to embrace him and congratulate him for still being alive? Well, he looked at me with those eyes of his, icy as the ball-freezing Holland canals, and said, 'We were too tired to run.'"
They did not come looking for him at night, as I expected, but in the late afternoon, and more or less officially. Someone knocked at the door, and when I opened it I saw the substantial figure of the head constable, Martin Saldana. His bailiffs were stationed on the stairs and in the courtyard—I counted half a dozen—and some had their swords unsheathed.
Saldana came in alone, his belt sagging with the metal it held, and closed the door after himself, keeping his hat on and his sword in his baldric. Alatriste, in shirtsleeves, had jumped up and was waiting in the center of the room. As the constable entered, he took his hand from his dagger, which he had quickly grasped when he heard the knocking.
"Christ's blood, Diego, you are making this difficult for me," said Saldana with bad humor, pretending not to see the two pistols on the table. "You should at least have left Madrid. Or moved to new lodgings."
"I was not expecting you."
"Yes, I can believe that I am not the one you were expecting." Saldana finally looked at the pistols, walked a few steps into the room, took off his hat and set it over them, covering them. "Although you were expecting someone."
"And what am I supposed to have done?"
I was watching from the doorway to the other room, uneasy about this development. Saldana looked at me a moment and then walked the other way. He had also been a friend of my father's, in Flanders.
"May I be struck by a thunderbolt if I know," he told the captain. "My orders are to arrest you, or kill you if you resist."
"Of what am I accused?"
The lieutenant was evasive. He shrugged and said, "You are not accused of anything. Someone wants to speak with you."
"Who gave the orders?"
"That is none of your concern. Those are the orders I was given, and that is enough for me." Again he was looking at Alatriste with annoyance, as if chastising him for creating this mess. "May I know what is going on, Diego? You have no idea what you have stirred up."
Alatriste gave him a twisted smile, one with no trace of humor. "All I did was accept the assignment you recommended."
"Well, I curse the hour I did, 'pon my oath, I do!" Saldana sighed a long, loud sigh. "By God, the men who employed you are not at all satisfied with how you carried it out."
"It was too dirty, Martin."
"Too dirty? And what does that matter? I cannot remember having done anything clean in the last thirty years. And I believe that may also be said of you."
"It was foul even by our standards."
"Say no more." Saldana threw his hands up. "I do not want to know anything about anything. In these times knowing too much is worse than knowing too little." Again he looked at Alatriste, uncomfortable but resolute. "Are you going to come along quietly, or not?"
"What cards are you dealing me?"
Saldana had little time to consider, but after a moment he came to a conclusion. "Very well. I can stay here while you test your luck with the men I have outside. They are not very skilled with their swords, but there are six of them. I doubt that even you can get to the street without a couple of souvenir slashes and likely a shot or two."
"And which way will we travel?"
"We go in a closed carriage, so you can forget about the route. You should have been away long before we came. You had more than enough time." The look Saldana threw at the captain was heavy with reproach. "Damn my soul if I expected to find you here!"
"But where are you taking me?"
"I cannot tell you that. In truth, I have said much more than I should." I was still in the doorway, not moving, not talking, but the high constable noticed me for a second time. "Do you want me to look after the boy?"
"No, leave him here." Alatriste did not even turn toward me, absorbed in his thoughts. "La Lebrijana will see to him."
"As you wish. Are you coming?"
"Tell me where, Martin."
Saldana shook his head, annoyed. "I have told you that I cannot."
"It would not be to the town prison, would it?"
Saldana's silence was eloquent. Then on Captain Alatriste's face I saw that grimace that sometimes took the place of a smile.
"Do you have orders to kill me?" he asked serenely.
Again Saldana shook his head. "No. I give you my word that my orders were to bring you back if you did not resist. Whether they will let you leave after I take you in is a different question. But by then you will no longer be my responsibility."
"If it weren't for the fuss it might make, they would have dispatched me right here." Alatriste pulled his finger across his throat, imitating the path of a knife. "They have sent you because they want official secrecy. Arrested, interrogated, and, they will say, set free afterward, and so on and so on. And in the meantime, who will know?"
Without hesitation, Saldana nodded his agreement. "That is what I think," he said, matter-of-factly. "I am only surprised that they did not dream up charges; whether true or false, an accusation is the easiest thing in the world to fabricate. Maybe they are afraid you will speak out in public. If truth be known, my orders were to not exchange a single word with you. And they did not want me to list your name in my ledger of prisoners. God help you!"
"Let me bring a weapon, Martin."
The constable's jaw dropped open. "A weapon? . . . Not a chance," he said after a long pause.
Moving with extreme deliberation, the captain pulled out his slaughterer's knife and showed it to the constable. "Just this one."
"You have lost your senses. Do you take me for a blockhead?"
Alatriste shook his head no. "They want to kill me," he replied simply. "That is no surprise in my trade—it will happen sooner or later. But I never like to make things easy." Again that twisted smile flowered. "I swear that I will not use it against you."
Saldana scratched his soldier's beard, which covered the long scar running from his mouth to his left ear. He had received it during the siege of Ostend, in the attacks on the redoubts of El Caballo and La Cortina, outside the walls. Among his companions on that day—and others—had been Diego Alatriste.
"Nor against any of my men," said Saldana at last.
"On my oath."
The constable still hesitated. Then he turned his back, uttering blasphemous curses under his breath, as the captain slid the knife down the leg of a boot.
"Damn your eyes, Diego," said Saldana, finally. "Let's get our asses out of here."
They left with no further conversation. The captain chose not to wear his cloak, to suggest he was defenseless, and Martin Saldana agreed. He also allowed his old friend to wear a buff coat over his doublet. "It will guard against the cold," he said, hiding a smile. As for me, I neither stayed at home nor went to Caridad la Lebrijana's. The minute they started down the stairs, without thinking twice I grabbed the pistols from the table and the sword hanging on the wall, and bundled them all up in the captain's cloak, then tucked them under my arm and ran after them.