The Sun Over Breda

I was that morning, as I was saying, reading in the sunshine and pausing from time to time to consider some of the meaty arguments proposed. I, too, had my Dulcinea, as perhaps some of Your Mercies may recall, although my travails of love came not from the disdain of the mistress of my heart but from her perfidy, a circumstance of which I have previously given account when narrating earlier adventures. But even though I had seen myself on the verge of sacrificing honor and life in that sweet trap—the memory of a certain vile talisman sears my memory—I could not forget the vision of blond corkscrew curls and eyes as blue as the sky over Madrid or of a smile identical to the devil’s when, through Eve’s intercession, he tempted Adam to sink his teeth into the fabled apple. The object of my concerns, I calculated, must by now be about thirteen or fourteen years old, and when I imagined her at court participating in soirées and flirtatious carriage rides, surrounded by pages and handsome youths and dandies, I felt for the first time the black scourge of jealousy. Not even my youth, ever more vigorous, or the portents and perils of Flanders, or the nearby presence of the army of vivandières and trulls who followed the soldiers, or the Flemish women themselves—to whom, by my faith, we Spaniards were not always as hostile as we were to their fathers, brothers, and husbands—could make me forget Angélica de Alquézar.

I was mulling over these thoughts when a variety of sounds and commotion drew me from my reading. A general muster of the tercio

had been issued, and soldiers were running hither and yon collecting weapons and appurtenances. The colonel had summoned the troops to a flat area just outside Oudkerk, which town we had taken by force some time back and turned into the principal quarters of the Spanish garrison northwest of Breda. My comrade, Jaime Correas, who showed up with the men from Lieutenant Coto’s squad, told me as we joined the others on the way to the appointed location, about a mile from Oudkerk, that the review of the troops had been ordered overnight, called to resolve some very ugly questions of discipline involving a confrontation between soldiers and officers the previous day. This was the rumor circulating among the troops and the mochileros

as we walked along the dike toward the nearby plain. The subject was being discussed from every viewpoint, and commands occasionally shouted by the sergeants were not enough to quiet the men.

Jaime, walking beside me, was carrying two short pikes, a brass helmet weighing twenty pounds, and a musket from the squad he served. I myself had Diego Alatriste’s and Mendieta’s harquebuses, a calfskin pack stuffed to the top, and several flasks of powder. Jaime was bringing me up to date as we walked along. It seems that in light of the need to fortify Oudkerk with bastions and trenches, regular soldiers had been asked to do the job, digging sod and carrying fascines (bundles of sticks to aid fortification) for the battlements, with the promise of pay that would remedy the poverty in which, as I have said, they all found themselves because of wages owed and scarcity of provisions. Put a different way, wages to which they were entitled but had not received could be earned a second time by those willing to put shoulder to the wheel, and at the end of each day’s labor they would receive the agreed-upon stipend. Many in the tercio

accepted this means of improving their situation, but some spoke up, saying that if there was good coin to be had, their back pay should come first and then the fortifications and that they should not have to work to earn what was already owed them by rights. They said they would rather go without than resort to this remedy, forcing hunger to compete so vilely with honor, and that an hidalgo—for every soldier called himself that—deserved more and that it was better to die of misery and maintain their good name than to owe their well-being to spades and hoes.

In the midst of all this commotion, groups of men had been milling around and trading words amongst themselves, when a sergeant from a certain company mistreated a harquebusier from the bandera of Captain Torralba. This soldier and a comrade, short-tempered despite recognizing by his halberd that the aggressor was a sergeant, jumped into the fire, and, wielding their swords a little too freely, they gravely wounded their offender, only a miracle preventing them from dispatching him to his reward. So it was expected that the colonel would make a public example of the guilty parties and that, with the exception of those on watch, he wanted the entire tercio to witness it.