Sancho Panza's account: the blanket

My squire has asked to give his own account of our days at the castle. I allow it, since a squire's view has its value, though the reader should know that Sancho sees only what is in front of his nose, and the castle was enchanted. — Don Quixote

Right. Thank you, master. I'll tell it the way it happened, which is the only way I know. Two men can look at one pig, and one sees bacon and the other sees a dragon. I'm the bacon man. Always have been.

01 The Yanguesans

It began in a meadow by a stream, where we stopped to eat. Some carriers from Yanguas were grazing their ponies there, mares mostly, and Rocinante, who my master swears is as pure as a novice, took one look and trotted off to pay his respects. The mares didn't want his respects. They kicked him and bit him, and the carriers came running with their staves and laid him out flat.

My master says, Sancho, these are no knights, so you may lawfully help me avenge my horse. I said, master, there's twenty of them and two of us, and maybe only one and a half. He said he was worth a hundred. Not that day. We went at them, and before you could say an Ave Maria we were lying in the grass next to Rocinante, beaten soft as dough, and the carriers loaded up and went off whistling.

Lying there, I said what my grandmother used to say: go out for wool and come home shorn. My master said it was his fault for drawing on men who weren't knights, and that next time I should deal with that sort. I said I'm a peaceable man and I've forgiven everybody in advance, so that's no good. He said it was Christian of me but a poor qualification for a governor. Then we laid him across Dapple, who came through it all without a mark on him, bless his grey ears, and that's how we came to the inn.

02 Maritornes in the dark

My master said it was a castle. I said it was an inn. He said castle. It was an inn. The innkeeper's wife was kind, and her daughter, and there was a serving girl from Asturias called Maritornes, wide of face and short of neck, with one eye that wandered off on its own business, but a good heart in her. They plastered us up. My master had so many bruises the wife asked if he'd fallen off something, and I said a rock, and she said she'd need more plasters, and I said keep some back for me, I fell off the same rock just watching.

They put us in an old hayloft. My master's bed was four boards and a mattress full of lumps like river stones. A carrier slept in the same loft, and he and Maritornes had arranged to meet there in the night, which was their business and nobody else's.

But my master, lying awake with his aches, had decided that the castle's princess had fallen for him and would come to him in the dark. So when Maritornes came feeling her way across the loft in her shift, he caught her by the wrist and sat her down and made her a lovely long speech about how he'd gladly return her love if he weren't sworn to the lady Dulcinea. He told me after that her hair shone like gold thread and her breath was sweet as a garden. Her hair was like a mule's tail and her breath was last night's garlic. They say love is blind. My master's love is blind, deaf, and has a cold in the nose.

The carrier heard all this and didn't care for it. He fetched my master a thump on the jaw and then climbed up and walked about on his ribs. The bed gave up and went to the floor. The innkeeper came up with a lamp, Maritornes ran and hid in my bed, I woke up thinking a nightmare was sitting on me and started swinging, she swung back, the carrier came to help her, the innkeeper came to help nobody, and for a while everybody was hitting everybody, like a wedding back home. Then the lamp went out, and it got worse.

03 The balsam of Fierabrás

Next morning my master said the castle was enchanted and an enchanted Moor had beaten us, which made him feel better about it. Then he said he would make the balsam of Fierabrás, from his books, a drop of which mends any wound, so that if a knight is cut in two, his squire need only press the halves together and give him a sip. I said, master, give me the recipe instead of the island. I meant it.

He boiled up oil, wine, salt and rosemary in a pot and prayed over it for most of an hour, crossing it at every word. Then he drank a good pint. Straight away up it all came, and he sweated like a cheese in August, and slept three hours, and woke up saying he was cured. Well, if the master's cured, the squire wants curing too, so I drank the rest. God help me. It came out of both ends at once, and I was sure I was dying, and I cursed the balsam and whoever wrote it down. My master said kindly that it must only work on knights. I said, then why did you let me drink it? He had an answer. It was about enchanters.

04 The blanket

When we could stand, my master saddled up, and the innkeeper asked to be paid. My master said, so this is an inn? The innkeeper said a very respectable one. My master said in that case he'd been deceived, but he still couldn't pay, because knights errant never pay for their lodging anywhere, it's the law, and off he rode out of the gate like a bishop.

So the innkeeper turned to me, and I said the law was the same for squires. Wrong answer. There were some lads staying there, wool-carders from Segovia and needle-makers from Córdoba, merry fellows with time on their hands, and they took a blanket off the innkeeper's bed, sat me in the middle of it, carried me out into the yard where the sky was high enough, and tossed me. Up and down. Up and down. Like a pancake on a feast day.

Every time I came down, I was a little less of a squire and a little more of a pancake.

My master heard me hollering and rode back to the yard wall, but it was too high to get over, and he was too sore to get down. So he sat on Rocinante and shouted at them over the top. He told me later he was held in the saddle by enchantment. It might have been. It might have been his ribs. When they'd had their fun they put me back on Dapple, and Maritornes, God keep her, brought me water from the well, and then, when I asked nicely, wine, which she paid for herself. They kept my saddlebags for the bill. Him that has no coin pays in skin, as they say.

My master says the tossers were phantoms of the enchanted castle. I say they were wool-carders and I know their names, because they shouted them to each other the whole time. I'd sooner be home with Teresa and the harvest than chasing adventures that end in a blanket. But I'll go on with him, because he's my master and a good man, mad as a March hare. I'm just keeping one eye on the bedding. A scalded cat runs from cold water, and a tossed squire runs from a blanket.

Read nextOn choosing a squireHow my master talked me into all this, with an island.

To the sage who writes my history: my squire's account is honest, and wrong in every particular that matters. Set his words down faithfully, and mine beside them, and let the reader judge which of us has read more books.