Free The Devils of Cardona by Matthew Carr Page B

faces or architectural features from memory in the leather-bound sketchbook that he had brought with him.
    Of the two special constables, Gabriel liked Daniel more. Martín was taciturn and morose and gave the impression that he regarded a scribe who had never borne arms as a burden to be carried rather than an asset to the group. Daniel was more cheerful. One afternoon when they were out gathering firewood together, he explained that Martín had a wife and child in Valladolid and didn’t want to spend a long time away from them.
    â€œMe, I’m happy to be away,” Daniel said. “Just as long as I get back by next summer.”
    â€œWhy next summer?”
    â€œI’m getting married,
chico
. Settling down. I’m going to work on my wife’s parents’ farm. I’ve had enough of bad food and officers screaming in my face. And I’d rather ride a good woman by night than a bad horse by day, if you know what I mean?”
    Gabriel did not, but he sensed that he should. All this manly talk made him conscious of his own inexperience and bookishness and filled him with a determination to show his companions that he was more than a scribe. He saddled and unsaddled mules and horses. He gathered firewood and learned how to strike two flints and make a fire himself. He also tried out his companions’ weapons. Almost every evening he persuaded one of them to give him basic instructions in fencing positions and technique. Necker’s zweihänder was too heavy and unwieldy. Gabriel preferred Daniel’s short cinquedea with its thick base almost as wide as a hand tapering off to a sharp point, his guardian’s side sword with its bluish tempered steel or Ventura’s basilard parrying dagger and swept-hilt Italian rapier with its S-shaped guard, its silver pommel and leather grip and the Latin words
Usque mors
—“Until death”—which Ventura had had engraved in the blade just above the guard.
    With these weapons Gabriel learned how to position his feet, to thrust,lunge and parry and to gauge distance and anticipate his opponent’s movements. He also learned about the different schools of fencing. Ventura talked about Euclid’s theories of geometry, about the relative importance of obtuse and right angles in the meeting of the blades, about the exact distance of each step and the positioning of the feet for a thrust and lunge, about maintaining distance through circular movement within the same sphere and the importance of maintaining the same parallel distance between the rapier and parrying dagger.
    Ventura used Italian as well as Spanish expressions to describe particular movements and strikes. He talked of the
mediotajo
—the cut from the elbow—the
stramazzone
—the flip of the point—and the
stoccata—
the thrust delivered under the opponent’s sword with a turning of the wrist. Necker had learned his sword fighting in the Holy Roman emperor’s mercenary Landsknecht and was not impressed by Ventura’s intellectual approach. He often made disparaging remarks about the lighter blade that Ventura used and his enthusiasm for the new Italian methods, and Ventura teased him that his own sword was good for sacking Rome but not much else. One evening as they were setting up camp in an open field where Mendoza said that Numancia might once have stood, Ventura playfully insisted that the Passau wolf on Necker’s two-hander was a fake and annoyed him so much that the German challenged him to a mock duel.
    Mendoza agreed, on condition that there was no blood or physical contact. For more than half an hour, the two men fought in the open air, and Ventura eventually won the argument, as he effortlessly parried and evaded the big German’s slashing attacks before finally dropping onto one knee to deliver what would have been a killing blow. As Gabriel watched them fight and listened to the clash of their swords, he thought of the