Ines of My Soul Read Online Free PDF Page B

marched the whole night in silence, shivering with cold, and by dawn had reached the enemy fortress. Lookouts in the merlons noticed some kind of movement on the snow but thought it was shadows from trees bending in the wind. Until the last moment before the attack was launched, they had not seen the Spanish soldiers pulling themselves forward in white waves across the snow-covered ground. Taken by surprise, the French were overwhelmed. That striking victory made the marqués de Pescara the most famous military man of his time.
    One year later, Valdivia and Aguirre were in the battle of Pavía, the beautiful city of a hundred towers; there, too, the French had been defeated. The king of France, who was fighting desperately alongside his troops, was taken prisoner by a soldier in Pedro de Valdivia’s company. He had tumbled the monarch from his horse and, not knowing who he was, had nearly slit his throat, ignoring proper protocol. Valdivia’s timely intervention prevented that slaughter, thus changing the course of history.
    Ten thousand dead littered the field of combat; for weeks the air was swarming with flies and the land with rats. They say that still today you can find splintered bones between the leaves of the cabbages and cauliflowers of the region. Valdivia realized that for the first time it was not the cavalry that had been essential to their triumph but, rather, two new weapons: the harquebus, complicated to load but long in range, and the bronze cannon, lighter and more mobile than the old ones of forged iron. Another decisive element had been the thousands of mercenaries, Swiss, and German Landsknechts, famous for their brutality, which Valdivia disdained. For him, war, like everything else in life, was governed by honor. The battle of Pavía left him pondering the importance of strategy and modern arms. The demented courage of men like Francisco de Aguirre was no longer enough. War was a science that required study and logic.
    After the battle of Pavía, exhausted and limping from a lance wound in his hip that had been treated with boiling oil but tended to open with the least movement, Pedro de Valdivia returned to his home in Castuera. He was of an age to marry, to carry on the family name and take charge of his lands, which were barren following his long absence and lack of attention—as his mother never tired of reminding him. Ideal would be a bride with a substantial dowry, since the Valdivias’ impoverished estate greatly needed replenishing. The family and the priest had lined up a number of candidates—all with money and a good name—whom he would meet during his convalescence, but plans did not work out as expected. Instead, Pedro’s eye fell on Marina Ortiz de Gaete in the one place he had opportunity to meet her in public: on the way out of mass. Marina was thirteen and still dressed in the starched crinolines of childhood. She was accompanied by her duenna and a slave girl who held a parasol over her mistress’s head even though it was a cloudy day: a direct ray of sun had never touched the girl’s translucent skin. She had the face of an angel, gleaming blond hair, the unsteady walk of someone burdened with too many petticoats, and such an air of innocence that on the spot Pedro forgot his intention of improving the family fortunes. He was not a man of base calculations; he was honestly seduced by the girl’s beauty and virtue. She had no fortune, and her dowry was far below her worth, but he began to court her the minute he learned she was not promised to another.
    The Ortiz de Gaete family had themselves hoped for a union with monetary advantages but they could not reject a caballero with such an illustrious name, and proven valor as Pedro de Valdivia. Their only condition was that the pair wait to marry until the girl turned fourteen. In the meantime, though shy as a fawn, Marina accepted the attentions of her betrothed, and she let him know that