The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet (16 page)

“Right,” said Captain Contreras, almost licking his lips with delight, “to business.”

And we all emerged at once from the arcade, just as if we had turned the corner and happened on the scene by chance. Don Francisco de Quevedo, meanwhile, was murmuring philosophically to himself from beneath his cloak:

The musicians were now huddled against the wall, poor things, surrounded by the swords of the hired ruffians and with their instruments shattered. Gonzalo Moscatel had picked up their lantern from the ground and was holding it high, still with his sword in his right hand. He was furiously bawling questions at them: Who had sent them to disturb him at such an hour? How? Where? When? At this point, as we passed by, hats down over our eyes, our cloaks up to our noses, Captain Contreras said out loud something along the lines of: “A pox on these wretches troubling our streets, a pox on them and the devil who lights their way,” and he said this loudly enough for everyone to hear. Moscatel happened to be the person lighting the way of his four hired bully-boys—in the dim lantern glow we could see their sinister mugs, the lawyer Apolo’s porcine features, and the terrified expressions on the musicians’ faces—and he clearly felt that with the backing of his armed retinue, he could afford to strut and crow. He therefore addressed Captain Contreras in surly fashion—he had no idea who we were, of course—and told him to go to hell and not to stop en route. If we didn’t, he declared, by Saint Peter and by all the saints in the calendar, he would cut off our ears there and then. As you can imagine, these words suited our designs perfectly. Contreras laughed in Moscatel’s face and said with great aplomb that he had no idea what was going on there nor what the quarrel was about, but if it was a matter of cutting off anyone’s ears,
really
cutting off their ears, the fool who had just said that and the whore who bore him were very welcome to try. He laughed again and was still laughing, still without uncovering his face, as he took out his sword. Captain Alatriste, sword unsheathed, was already lunging at the nearest ruffian. Seemingly almost in the same movement, he slashed at Moscatel’s arm, causing him to drop the lantern and start back as if he had been stung by a scorpion. The light went out as it hit the ground, leaving us all in darkness. The terrified shadows of the three musicians scampered away like hares, and we fell with glee upon the remaining men—and it was like the Fall of Troy all over again.

 

 

 

 

Great God, but I enjoyed myself. The idea was that while doing our utmost not to kill anyone—we didn’t, after all, want to cast a pall on the marriage—amidst the general confusion and with the help of the duenna, whose palm had been greased with doubloons drawn from the same purse that had bribed the chaplain, we would allow time for Lopito de Vega to escape with Laura Moscatel by the back door and carry her off to the Convento de las Jerónimas in the carriage he had hired for the purpose. While all this was going on at the back door, blows were raining down in the pitch dark at the front door. Moscatel and his men fought like Turks, while Saturnino Apolo, from behind his shield, urged them on from a safe distance. Men as skilled as Alatriste, Quevedo, and Contreras had only to parry and thrust, which they did with a will, and I did not acquit myself badly either. I could hear the heavy breathing of the ruffian I took on above the clang of steel. This was no time for fancy flourishes because we were all fighting together and at close quarters, and so I resorted to a trick Captain Alatriste had taught me on board the
Jesús Nazareno
on the voyage home from Flanders. I made an upward thrust, drew back as if to cover my side, but instead spun round and, swift as a hawk, dealt my opponent a low slashing blow, which, given the sound it made and the position of my blade, must have sliced through the tendons at the back of his knee. My adversary fled, hopping and blaspheming against every saint in heaven, while I, feeling excited and very pleased with myself, looked around to see how I could best assist my comrades. The four of us had started to advance boldly on the six of them, muttering “Yepes, Yepes”—like the wine—which was the password we had decided upon so that we could recognize each other if we had to fight in the dark. Things were already tipping in our favor, however, because the lawyer Apolo had taken to his heels after taking a jab to the buttocks, and don Francisco de Quevedo—who made sure to keep his face covered by his cloak so that he would not be recognized—was repelling the particular ruffian it had fallen to him to fight.

“Yepes,” he said to me, as if he had done quite enough for one night.

For his part, Alonso de Contreras was still fighting—his man was putting up rather more resistance than his fellows—and they were still furiously battling it out, the other man retreating down the street, but not as yet running away. The fourth man was a motionless shape on the ground: he came off worst, for the thrust the captain had dealt him in the initial chaos was to prove deadly; as we learned afterward, three days later he was given the last rites and on the eighth day died. Having seen off one ruffian and wounded Moscatel in the arm, my master, making sure to keep his hat pulled well down and his face covered so that he would remain unrecognized by Moscatel, was now harrying the butcher with his sword, while that fool, who had long since ceased his strutting, was stumbling backward in search of the door to his house—something my master was doing his best to prevent—and calling for help to defend himself against these murderers. Moscatel finally fell to the ground, where Captain Alatriste spent some time kicking him in the ribs, until Contreras returned, having finally chased off his opponent.

“Yepes,” he said, when, at the sound of his footsteps, my master spun round, sword in hand.

Gonzalo Moscatel lay on the ground moaning, and his neighbors, woken by the clamor, were beginning to appear at their windows. At the far end of the street a light glimmered, and someone yelled something about calling out the constables.

“Can we please leave now?” grumbled don Francisco de Quevedo from behind his cloak.

The suggestion seemed a reasonable one, and so we made our exit as if we were carrying in our pocket the king’s patent. An ebullient Alonso de Contreras affectionately patted my cheek and called me “son,” and Captain Alatriste, after giving Moscatel one last kick in the ribs, followed after, sheathing his sword. Three or four streets farther on, when we made a halt in Calle de Tudescos to celebrate, Contreras was still laughing.

“Od’s my life,” he declared. “I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since the sack of Negroponte, when I had some Englishmen hanged.”

 

 

 

 

Lopito de Vega and Laura Moscatel were married four weeks later in the church of the Jerónimas, in the absence of her uncle, who was going about Madrid with fourteen stitches in his face and his arm in a sling, blaming both injuries on a certain “Yepes.” Lopito’s father was not present either. The marriage was a very discreet affair, with Captain Contreras, Quevedo, my master, and I as witnesses. The young couple moved into a modest rented house in Plaza de Antón Martín, where they intended to await Lopito’s promotion to ensign. As far as I know, they lived there happily for three months. Then, due to some infection of the air or a corruption of the water caused by the terrible heat ravaging Madrid that year, Laura Moscatel died of a malign fever, after being bled and purged by incompetent doctors; and her young widower, his heart broken, returned to Italy. And so ended the strange adventure of Calle de Madera, and I, too, learned something from that whole sad affair: Time carries everything away, and eternal happiness exists only in the imaginations of poets and on the stage.

Angélica de Alquézar had again asked me to meet her at the Puerta de la Priora. As she put it in her brief note:
I require an escort
. I would be lying if I said that I had no reservations about accepting; on the other, hand, I never for a moment considered not going. Angélica had entered my blood like a quartan fever. I had tasted her lips, touched her skin, and seen too many promises in her eyes; my judgment grew blurred whenever she was involved. Nevertheless, however in love I may have been, I was not totally bereft of all common sense, and so this time, I took proper precautions, and when the door opened and that same agile shadow joined me in the darkness, I was reasonably well prepared for what might lie ahead. I had on a thick buffcoat made by a leatherworker in Calle de Toledo out of an old one belonging to the captain, and had my sword at my left side and my dagger tucked into my belt at the back. Covering and disguising all these things, I was wearing a gray serge cloak and a black hat with no feather or band. I had also washed with soap and water, and was sporting the soft down on my upper lip which I kept shaving in the hope that this would encourage it, one day, to reach the impressive dimensions of Captain Alatriste’s mustache; this it never did, by the way, for I never had much of a mustache or a beard. Before leaving, I scrutinized myself in La Lebrijana’s mirror, and was quite pleased with what I saw, and on my way to the rendezvous, whenever I passed beneath a torch or a lantern, I would admire my own shadow. I recall this now and smile, and I’m sure that you, dear readers, will understand.

“Where are you taking me this time?” I asked.

“I want to show you something,” replied Angélica. “It will be useful for your education.”

I did not find these words in the least reassuring. I had seen something of life by then and knew that anything “useful for one’s education” was only ever acquired with damage to one’s own ribs or with the kind of bloodletting not administered by a barber. So, once again, I prepared myself for the worst, or, rather, resigned myself—sweetly and fearfully. As I have said before, I was very young at the time and in love with the devil.

“You seem to like dressing as a man,” I said.

This continued both to fascinate and shock me. As I mentioned earlier, a woman adopting male attire in order to find manly glory or to seek a solution to troubles of the heart had been a commonplace in the theater since the early Italian plays and, indeed, since Ariosto, but the truth is that, plays and legends apart, such a figure never appeared in real life, or not at least in my experience. Angélica laughed softly, as if to herself, more Marfisa than Bradamante, for I would soon learn the extent to which she was moved less by love than by war.

“Surely,” she said mischievously, “you wouldn’t want me running around Madrid in skirt and farthingale.”

She completed this thought by placing her lips so close to my ear that they touched it, making the skin all over my body prickle; then she whispered these bold lines by Lope:

And, wretch that I was, the only thing that prevented me from kissing her, whether stained in blood or not, was the fact that she suddenly turned away and set off at a brisk pace. The journey, this time, was shorter. Following the walls of the Convento de María de Aragón, we walked through dark and near-deserted streets to the orchards and vegetable gardens of Leganitos, where I felt the cold and damp penetrate my serge cloak. In her mannish black clothes and with her dagger at her waist, she was only lightly dressed yet she did not appear to feel the cold. She strode resolutely into the night, determined and confident. When I paused to get my bearings, she carried on, without waiting, and I had no option but to go after her, casting cautious glances to right and left. She wore a page’s cap tucked into her belt so that she could cover her hair should this prove necessary, but meanwhile, she wore it loose, and the pale smudge of her fair hair guided me through the darkness toward the abyss.

 

 

 

 

There wasn’t a light to be seen anywhere. Alone in the dark, Diego Alatriste stopped and, with professional prudence, looked around him. Not a soul in sight. Again he touched the folded piece of paper he was carrying in his purse.

He had hesitated right up until the last moment. Finally, when there was only just enough time, he had downed a quart of brandy to keep out the cold. Then, having equipped himself properly as regards weapons and clothing—including, this time, his buffcoat—he set off toward Plaza Mayor and from there to Santo Domingo before following Calle de Leganitos to the outskirts of the city. This was where he was now, standing by the bridge near the walls surrounding the orchards, watching the road that lay steeped in shadow. In common with all the other houses bordering the river, no lights were lit in the first house. These houses, each with its own orchard and fields, were often used as cool summer retreats. The one that interested Alatriste had been built against the wall of a ruined convent, whose cloister served as a small garden, its roofless pillars holding up the starry vault of the sky.

A dog barked in the distance and another answered. Then the barking stopped and silence was restored. Alatriste stroked his mustache as he again looked about him before proceeding. When he reached the house, he pushed back his cloak and folded it over his left shoulder so as to leave his sword free. He knew what might happen. He had thought about it all evening as he sat on his bed, staring at his weapons where they hung from a nail on the wall. Then he made his decision and set off. Oddly, this decision had nothing to do with desire. Or rather, if he was honest with himself, he did still desire María de Castro, but this wasn’t why he was standing now in the dark, listening intently, his hand hovering over the hilt of his sword, as he sniffed out possible perils like a boar scenting the presence of the huntsman and his pack of hounds. There was another reason, too. “The royal domain,” Guadalmedina and Martín Saldaña had said, but he had a perfect right to be there if he chose. He had spent his life defending the royal domain, as his scarred body bore witness. Like all good men, he had done his duty a hundred times, but king and pawn were equal when naked and in a woman’s bed.