The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet (9 page)

That morning at the palace, when the Count of Guadalmedina spotted don Francisco and me, he came running down the last few stairs, elegantly sidestepping a small knot of petitioners—a retired captain, a cleric, a mayor, and three provincial hidalgos hoping for someone to breathe life into their pretensions. Then, having greeted the poet affectionately and clapped me cordially on the back, he took us to one side and came straight to the point.

“We have a problem,” he said gravely.

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, as if wondering whether he should say anything further in my presence. I had, however, already lived through many adventures with Captain Alatriste and don Francisco, such that my loyalty and discretion were proven beyond doubt. Glancing around him to make sure that no palace ears were listening, he touched his cap to a member of the Council of the Exchequer who was walking past beneath the arches—and after whom the group of petitioners scuttled like pigs to a maize field—then, lowering his voice to a whisper, said:

“Tell Alatriste to change mounts.”

It took me a while to understand what he meant. Not so the ever-sharp don Francisco, who adjusted his glasses in order to study the count more closely.

“Are you serious?”

“I certainly am. Do I look as if I were in the mood for jokes?”

A silence. I was beginning to understand. Quevedo cursed quietly:

“Where women are concerned, I am, in every sense and tense, finished. You should give him the message yourself. If you have the balls for it, that is.”

“You jest,” Guadalmedina replied, shaking his head, unaffected by Quevedo’s free manner of speaking. “I can’t get involved in this.”

“And yet you happily meddle in other affairs.”

The count was stroking his mustache and beard, avoiding having to answer.

“That’s enough, Quevedo. We all have our obligations, and I’m doing more than my part by warning him.”

“What should I tell him, then?”

“I don’t know. Tell him to aim less high. Tell him that Austria is besieging the same citadel as he.”

A long and eloquent silence ensued, during which the two men regarded each other. One was wrestling with feelings of loyalty and prudence, the other with feelings of friendship and self-interest. Well placed as both men were at the time, and enjoying as they did the favor of the court, it would have been far safer, far more sensible, and more comfortable for the latter to say nothing and for the former not to listen. And yet there they were at the foot of the palace steps, exchanging anxious whispers about their friend. I was mature enough to appreciate their dilemma.

Finally, Guadalmedina shrugged and said:

“What do you expect? When the king wants something, there’s nothing more to be said. He can say black is white.”

I thought about this. How strange life is, I concluded. There was that lovely queen in the palace, an extremely beautiful woman who would, one would have thought, be enough to make any man happy, and yet, instead, the king chased after other women, and after mere riffraff, too: maids, actresses, serving wenches. I had no idea then that the king, despite his essentially kindly nature and his famed composure, or perhaps because of the same, was already succumbing to the two great vices which, in a few short years, would put paid to the prestige of the monarchy built up by his grandfather and great-grandfather: namely, an unbridled appetite for women and a complete indifference to affairs of state, both of which—appetite and affairs of state—he habitually left to panders and favorites to deal with.

“Is it an accomplished fact?”

“It will be in a day or so, I fear. Or before. The business with your play is helping greatly. The lady had already caught the king’s eye at the theater, but then he watched the rehearsal of the first act—incognito, of course—and he was lost.”

“What about the husband?”

“Oh, he knows all about it, naturally.” Guadalmedina made a gesture as if patting his purse. “As keen as a knife he is, and with no scruples. This is the chance of a lifetime for him.”

Quevedo shook his head sadly. He kept shooting me occasional worried glances.

“Dear God,” he said.

His tone was somber, in keeping with the circumstances. I was thinking about my master, too. When it came to certain matters—and María de Castro might well be such a one—men like Captain Alatriste didn’t care whether they were dealt a king or a knave.

 

 

 

 

The afternoon was drawing gently to a close, and the yellow sun’s horizontal rays were casting long shadows along Carrera de San Jerónimo. At that hour, the cauldron of the Prado was seething with carriages: one caught glimpses of bejeweled hair and white hands fluttering fans, and many of the carriages were accompanied by gallant young horsemen. Opposite the garden of Juan Fernández, where the upper and lower Prado met, throngs of people were strolling about, enjoying the late sun: ladies—covered or half covered by their cloaks—clattered along in their clogs, although some were not ladies at all and never would be, whatever pretensions they might have. Likewise, many of the supposed hidalgos passing by—despite swords, capes, and the grand air they affected—had come straight from a cobbler’s or a grocer’s or a tailor’s where they earned their daily bread with their hands. These were all perfectly honorable professions, but were, as I said, rejected as such by most Spaniards. There were, of course, genuine people of quality as well, but they were to be found near the little groves of fruit trees, the flower beds, the box maze, the waterwheel, and the garden’s celebrated rustic arbor where, that afternoon, inspired by the success of Tirso’s play, which was still being performed at the Corral de la Cruz, the Countesses of Olivares, Lemos, and Salvatierra and other ladies of the court had arranged to hold an informal picnic, with puff pastry cakes, made by the nuns from the Convento de las Descalzas Reales, and hot chocolate from the Augustinian monastery of Recoletos in honor of Cardinal Barberini, papal legate—and nephew—of His Holiness Urban VIII, who was visiting Madrid amidst much diplomatic salaaming from both parties and especially from him. After all, the Spanish troops were Catholicism’s best defense, and, as in the days of the great Charles V, our monarchs, rather than be governed by heretics, were still prepared to lose everything—as, ultimately, they and we did. It does, nonetheless, seem paradoxical that while Spain was pouring blood and money into defending the one true religion, His Holiness was secretly undermining our power in Italy and in the rest of Europe, his agents and diplomats making pacts with our enemies. It would perhaps have concentrated minds had we sacked Rome again as the emperor’s troops had done ninety-nine years before, in 1527, when we were still what we were and the mere word “Spaniard” could make the world hold its breath. Alas, these were very different times; Philip IV was certainly no match for his great-grandfather Charles; appearances tended to be preserved now through politics and diplomacy; and given the lean times ahead, it was hardly the moment for pontiffs to be hitching up their vestments and scurrying off to take refuge in Castel Sant’Angelo with the halberds of our Landsknecht soldiers tickling their arses. And that was a shame, because in the restless Europe I am describing—which contained young nations just coming into being, and older nations, like ours, with its century and a half of history—being loved would have brought us only a tenth of the advantages of being feared. Given the way things were, had we Spaniards opted to be loved, all those nations trying to cut the ground from beneath our feet—the English, the French, the Dutch, the Venetians, the Turks, et cetera—would long ago have destroyed us, and would have done so gratis. At least, by fighting for every foot of land, every league of sea, and every ounce of gold, we made the bastards pay dearly for it.

Anyway, let us return to Madrid and to his eminence, Cardinal Barberini. That afternoon, the most illustrious guests, including the pope’s nephew, had long since left the gathering in the garden; however, there were still remnants of that party in the form of ladies and gentlemen of the court, people out for a stroll, enjoying the lovely gardens and the lawn near the waterwheel, and the cool drinks and dishes containing fruits and sweetmeats set out beneath the arbor awning. Outside, too, along the avenues and amongst the fountains, from San Jerónimo to Recoletos, people were promenading up and down or else taking their ease beneath the trees; there were carriages, respectable married couples, ladies of quality, doxies carrying lapdogs and pretending to be ladies, young wastrels, serving wenches from inns with nothing to lose, handsome young men on horseback, fops, vendors of limes and sweetmeats, maids and lackeys, and idle onlookers. Indeed, the scene was exactly as described, with his usual self-assurance, by an acquaintance and neighbor of ours, the poet Salas Barbadillo.

And we, too, were out for a leisurely afternoon stroll, the captain, don Francisco de Quevedo, and I, from the garden to the Torrecilla de la Música, where minstrels were playing, and then back up to the Prado again, beneath the shade cast by the three lines of tall poplars. My master and Quevedo were talking quietly about various private matters, and I have to confess that, although I normally listened carefully to what they said, on this occasion I had concerns of my own: that rendezvous near the palace at the hour of the angelus. This did not, however, prevent me from catching the drift of the conversation.

“You’re risking your life,” I heard don Francisco say, and a little farther on—the captain was walking beside him in silence, his eyes somber beneath the brim of his hat—he said it again:

“You’re risking your life, you know. That particular cow bears someone else’s brand.”

They stopped, and I did too, by the parapet of the little bridge, in order to allow a few carriages to pass, carrying off ladies of the court and giving way to the trollops and whores who, with nightfall, would be out looking for likely lances to pierce their shields, and to loose young women, faces half covered, who, behind the backs of fathers or brothers, on the pretext of going to a late mass or on a charitable errand, and accompanied by an indulgent duenna, were off either to find or to meet some secret lover. Quevedo doffed his hat to an acquaintance in one of the carriages, then turned back to my master.

“It’s as absurd as a doctor bothering to marry an old woman, when it’s perfectly within his power to kill her.”

The captain tugged at his mustache, unable to repress a smile, but still he said nothing.

“If you insist,” said Quevedo, “you’re as good as dead.”

These words startled me. I studied my master’s impassive aquiline profile silhouetted against the declining afternoon light.

“Well, I have no intention of simply surrendering,” he said at last.

His friend looked at him, intrigued.

“Surrendering what? The woman?”

“No, my life.”

There was another silence; then the poet, glancing around him, whispered something along the lines of: “You’re mad, Captain. No woman is worth risking your neck for. This is a very dangerous game indeed.” My master merely smoothed his mustache and said nothing more. And after uttering a few curses and “I’faith”s, don Francisco shrugged.

“Well, don’t rely on me for help,” he said. “I don’t fight kings.”

The captain looked at him again but made no comment. We walked back toward the garden’s boundary walls, and shortly afterward, halfway between the Torrecilla and one of the fountains, we saw in the distance an open carriage drawn by two fine mules. I paid it no attention until I saw my master’s face. I followed his gaze and saw, seated in the right-hand side of the carriage, María de Castro, all dressed up for the ride and looking very beautiful. To her left rode her diminutive husband, with his smiling, bewhiskered face; he was carrying an ivory-handled cane and wearing a gold-braided doublet and an elegant French-style beaver hat, which he was constantly having to remove to greet acquaintances along the way. He was clearly feeling delighted with life and with the excitement that he and his wife aroused.

“Were there ever two finer pairs of hands,” commented don Francisco wryly, “hers for seducing and his for filching? A very elegant net for catching fish.”

The captain said nothing. Some ladies clutching rosaries and wearing scapulars, robes, and full black skirts, were standing nearby with their husbands; they immediately drew into a knot, whispering and furiously fanning themselves as they shot glances at the carriage sharp as Berber arrows; meanwhile, their grave and equally black-clad husbands struggled to keep their composure, twirling their mustaches and staring at the carriage with barely concealed lust. As the actors approached, don Francisco told a story illustrating Cózar’s blithe, inventive nature. In one particular scene during a performance in Ocaña, he had forgotten to bring on stage with him the dagger with which he was supposed to slit another actor’s throat. When he realized his mistake, he had immediately snatched off his own false beard and pretended to strangle the other man with it. Afterward, the company had had to flee across the fields, pursued by furious townsfolk hurling stones at them.

“He’s altogether a very jolly rascal,” said Quevedo.

As the carriage drew nearer, Cózar recognized don Francisco and my master, and the rogue bowed very reverently, a bow in which I—trained now in courtly subtleties—saw a high degree of mockery. “With such courtesies, and with my wife,” the gesture said, “I pay for my doublet and my hat, and your purse is my revenge.” Or, in Quevedo’s words: