The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet

4. CALLE DE LOS PELIGROS

“We’re getting close,” she said.

We were walking along in the dark, guiding ourselves by the moonlight that filled the way ahead with the cutout shapes of rooftops and projected our own shadows onto the rough ground that ran with streams of grubby water and filth. We were speaking in whispers, and our footsteps echoed in the empty streets.

“Close to what?” I asked.

“Close.”

We had left behind us the Convento de la Encarnación and were approaching the little Plaza de Santo Domingo, presided over by the sinister bulk of the monastery occupied by the monks of the Holy Office. There was no one to be seen near the old fountain, and the fruit and vegetable stalls were, of course, bare. A guttering lamp above an image of the Virgin lit up the corner of Calle de San Bernardo beyond.

“Do you know the Tavern of the Dog?” asked Angélica.

I stopped and, after a few steps, so did she. By the light of the moon, I could see her man’s costume, the tight doublet concealing all feminine curves, her fair hair caught up beneath a felt cap, the metallic glint of the dagger at her waist.

“Why have you stopped?” she asked.

“I never imagined I would hear the name of that inn on your lips.”

“There are, I’m afraid, far too many things you have never imagined. But don’t worry, I won’t ask you to go in.”

This reassured me somewhat, but not much. The Tavern of the Dog was a place even I would tremble to enter, for it was a meeting place for whores, ruffians, louts, and other passing trade. The quarter itself, Santo Domingo and San Bernardo, was a perfectly reputable area, inhabited by respectable people; however, the narrow alleyway where the inn was to be found—between Calle de Tudescos and Calle de Silva—was a kind of pustule that none of the neighbors’ protests could burst.

“Do you know the inn or don’t you?”

I said that I did, but avoided going into further detail. I had been there once with Captain Alatriste and don Francisco de Quevedo when the poet was in search of inspiration and looking for fresh material for his lighter verse. “The Dog” was the illustrative nickname given to the owner of the tavern, who sold hippocras, an infamous and extremely expensive cordial whose consumption was forbidden by various decrees, because, in order to make the drink more cheaply, its manufacturers routinely adulterated it with alum stone, waste matter, and other substances harmful to the health. Despite this, it continued to be drunk clandestinely, and since any prohibition brings wealth to those tradesman who flouts it, the Dog sold his particular brand of rat poison at twenty-five maravedís for half a quart—which was very good business indeed.

“Is there a place where we could keep watch on the tavern?”

I tried to remember. It was a short, gloomy street which at various points—by a crumbling wall, say, or around some hidden corner—would be pitch-black at night. The only problem, I explained, was that such places might be occupied by trulls.

“Trulls?”

“Whores.”

I felt a kind of cruel pleasure in using such words, as if this gave me back a little of the initiative which she seemed determined to seize. Angélica de Alquézar did not, after all, know everything. Besides, she may have been dressed as a man, and be very brave indeed, but in Madrid, and at night, I was in my element and she was not. The sword hanging from my belt was not an ornament.

“Oh,” she said.

This restored my composure. I might be head over heels in love, but this in no way diminished me, and, I concluded, it was no bad thing to make this clear.

“Tell me what exactly you’re up to and where I fit in.”

“Later,” she said and set off with determined step.

I stayed where I was. After going only a short distance, she stopped and turned.

“Tell me,” I insisted, “or you’re on your own.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

She was standing there defiantly, a black shape in male costume, one hand resting casually on the belt on which she wore her dagger. I counted to ten, then spun round and strode away. Six, seven, eight steps. I was cursing inside and my heart was breaking. She was letting me leave, and I could not go back.

“Wait,” she said.

I stopped, much relieved. I heard her footsteps approaching, felt her hand on my arm. When I turned, her eyes were lit by a ray of moonlight slipping between the eaves. I thought I could smell fresh bread. It was her. Yes, she smelled of fresh bread.

“I need an escort,” she said.

“But why me?”

“Because there’s no one else I can trust.”

It sounded like the truth. It sounded like a lie. It sounded probable and improbable, possible and impossible, and the fact is, I didn’t care. She was close. Very close. If I had reached out a hand, I could have touched her body, her face.

“There’s a man I have to watch,” she said.

I stared at her in astonishment. What was a maid of honor from the court doing out alone in the dangerous Madrid night, keeping watch on a man? On whose orders? The sinister figure of her uncle, the royal secretary, came into my mind. I was, I realized, getting drawn in again. Angélica was the niece of one of Captain Alatriste’s mortal enemies; she was the same girl-woman who, three years before, had led me to the Inquisition’s dungeons and, almost, to the stake.

“You must take me for a fool.”

She said nothing, and the oval of her face was like a pale stain in the darkness, although there was still that glint of moonlight in her eyes. I noticed that she was edging closer and closer. Her body was so near now that the guard of her dagger was digging into my thigh.

“Once I told you that I loved you,” she whispered.

And she kissed me on the mouth.

The only sources of light in the alleyway were a lit window and the grubby, smoky glow from a torch fixed in a ring on the wall next to the tavern door. Everything else lay in darkness, which meant that it was easy to melt into the shadow provided by a dilapidated wall that gave onto an abandoned garden. We positioned ourselves where we could see the door and window of the tavern. At the other end of the street, in the neighboring gloom of Calle de Tudescos, we could see a few ladies of the night casting their bait—with little success. Now and then, men, singly or in groups, would enter or leave the inn. Voices and laughter emerged from inside, and occasionally we caught a line from a song or the sound of a chaconne being strummed on a guitar. A drunk staggered over to where we were sitting in order to relieve himself and got the devil of a fright when I unsheathed my dagger, held it between his eyes, and told him in no uncertain terms to take himself and his bladder elsewhere. He must have assumed we were engaged in carnal business, because he said nothing, but stumbled off, weaving from one side of the street to another. Close by me, Angélica de Alquézar, vastly amused, was trying not to laugh.

“He took us for something we’re not,” she said, “and thought we were doing something we’re not.”

She seemed delighted with the whole situation—the strange place, the late hour, the danger. Perhaps, or so I wanted to believe, she was equally delighted to have me as her companion. Earlier, we had seen the night watch in the distance: a constable and four catchpoles armed with shields and swords and carrying a lantern. This had obliged us to take a different route, first, because the use of a sword by a boy of my years, just below the decreed limit, might be taken ill by the law. A far more serious danger, however, was the fact that Angélica’s male costume would not have survived scrutiny by the catchpoles, and such an event, while pleasant and amusing in a stage play, could have grave consequences in real life. The wearing of men’s clothes by women was strictly forbidden and was sometimes even banned in the theater. Indeed, it was only allowed if the actress was playing the part of a wronged or dishonored maiden—like Petronila and Tomasa in The Garden of Juan Fernández or Juana in Don Gil of the Green Breeches (both by Tirso), or Clavela in Lope’s The Little French Maid, and other such delicious characters in similar situations—who had a genuine excuse for going in search of their honor and of marriage and were not disguising themselves for vicious, capricious, or whorish reasons.

Don’t pretend to be so shocked,

And take away that frown;

I am a mermaid from the sea

And thus a fish—waist down!

This zealous desire to regulate clothing came not only from the prudes and hypocrites who later filled the bawdy houses (although that’s another story) but from the Church, which, through the offices of royal confessors, bishops, priests, and nuns (and we have always had more of them than a muleteers’ inn has bedbugs and ticks), was striving to save our souls and to stop the devil getting his own way, so much so that wearing men’s apparel came to be considered an aggravating factor when sending women to the stake in autos-da-fé. Yes, even the Holy Office of the Inquisition had a hand in the matter, as it did—and, indeed, still has—in so many aspects of life in this poor wretched Spain of ours.

That night, however, I was not feeling in the least wretched, hidden there in the shadows with Angélica de Alquézar, opposite the Tavern of the Dog. We were sitting on my cloak, waiting, and now and then our bodies touched. She was looking at the door of the inn, and I was looking at her, and sometimes, when she moved, the spluttering torch on the wall opposite would illuminate her profile, the whiteness of her skin, a few locks of blond hair escaping from beneath her felt cap. In her tight-fitting doublet and breeches, she resembled a young page, but that impression was given the lie when a brighter light fell upon her pale, fixed, resolute gaze. Occasionally, she appeared to be studying me with great calm and penetration, peering into the innermost recesses of my soul. And when she had finished, and before she resumed her watch on the inn door, the lovely line of her mouth would curve into a smile.

“Tell me something about yourself,” she said suddenly.

I placed my sword between my legs and sat for a while, nonplussed, not knowing what to say. Finally, I spoke about the first time I had seen her, in Calle de Toledo, when she was still little more than a child. I spoke about the Fuente del Acero, the dungeons of the Inquisition, the shame of the auto-da-fé, about her letter to me in Flanders, about how I had thought of her when the Dutch charged us at the Ruyter Mill and at the Terheyden barracks, while I was running after Captain Alatriste, carrying the flag, convinced that I was going to die.

“What is war like?”

She seemed to be paying close attention to my mouth, to me or to my words. I suddenly felt very grown-up. Almost old.

“Dirty,” I said simply. “Dirty and gray.”

She shook her head slowly, as if pondering this thought. Then she asked me to go on talking, and the dirt and the grayness were relegated to just one part of my memory. I rested my chin on the hilt of my sword and talked more about us—her and me. About our meeting in the Alcázar in Seville and the ambush she had led me into next to the pillars of Hercules. About our first kiss as I stood on the running board of her carriage, moments before I had to fight for my life with Gualterio Malatesta. That, more or less, is what I said. No words of love, no feelings. I merely described our meetings, the part of my life that had to do with her, and I did so with as much equanimity as possible, detail by detail, just as I remembered it and always would.

“Don’t you believe that I love you?” she said.

We gazed at each other for what seemed like centuries, and my head started to swim as if I had drunk a potion. I opened my mouth to say something—although quite what I didn’t know—or to kiss her perhaps. Not the kind of kiss she had given me in the Plaza de Santo Domingo, but a long, hard kiss, filled with a simultaneous desire to bite and caress, and with all the vigor of youth about to burst in my veins. And she smiled at me, her lips only inches from my mouth, with the serene certainty of someone who knows and waits and is capable of transforming mere chance into a man’s inevitable fate, as if long before I was born, everything had been written down in an ancient book which she kept in her possession.

“Yes, I believe . . .” I started to say.

Then her expression changed. Her eyes shifted rapidly back to the tavern door, and I followed her gaze. Two men had come out into the street, hats pulled down low over their eyes; there was a furtive air about them as they put on their cloaks. One of them was wearing a yellow doublet.

We followed them cautiously through the dark city streets. We did our best not to make a noise as we walked, trying not to lose sight of their black shapes ahead of us. Fortunately, they suspected nothing and followed a clear route: from Calle de Tudescos to Calle de la Verónica, and from there to Postigo de San Martín, which they followed as far as San Luis de los Franceses. There they paused to doff their hats to a priest who was just coming out of the church, accompanied by an altar boy and a page bearing a lantern, obviously setting out to give someone the last rites. In the brief light cast by that lantern, I had a chance to study the two men we were following: apart from his eyes, the face of the man in the yellow doublet was entirely hidden by his black hat and cloak; he was wearing shoes and hose, and when he removed his hat, I noticed that he had fair hair. The other man was wearing a featherless hat, boots, and a gray cloak, which his sword lifted up behind; and as he was leaving the Tavern of the Dog, I caught a glimpse of his belt and noticed that, as well as the sword buckled on over his thick jerkin, he had a fine pair of pistols, too.

“They look like dangerous men,” I whispered to Angélica.

“And does that worry you?”

I was too offended to reply. The men continued walking, and we followed behind. A little farther on, in San Luis, next to the stone cross that still marks the site of one of the city’s old gates, we passed the stalls where they sold bread or food and drinks during the day; they were all closed and there was not a soul in sight. In Calle del Caballero de Gracia, the men stopped in a doorway to avoid a light advancing toward them; as the light passed us, we saw that it was a midwife hurrying to assist at a birth, her path lit by a nervous, harried husband. Then the two men continued on, always keeping to the part of the street where the moonlight did not reach. We pursued them for a fair distance through dark streets, past barred windows with shutters or lowered blinds, past startled cats, past the oily flames of candles in niches containing images of the Virgin or of saints, and, in the distance, we caught the occasional warning cry of someone emptying a chamber pot into the street. From an alleyway came the sound of clashing steel, of furious fighting, and the two men stopped to listen; the incident clearly held no interest for them, however, because they did not linger. When Angélica and I reached the same spot, a figure, his cloak masking his face, ran past us, sword in hand. I peered cautiously down the alley and saw nothing but more barred windows and flowerpots; then I heard someone at the far end moan. I sheathed my sword—I had whisked it out at the sight of the fugitive—and made as if to go to the aid of the wounded man, but Angélica gripped my arm.

“It’s not our business.”

“But someone might be dying,” I protested.

“We’ll all die one day.”

And she strode off after the two men, obliging me to follow her through the dark city. For that was how it was in Madrid at night: dark, uncertain, and threatening.

We followed the men as far as a house in the narrow upper part of Calle de los Peligros, halfway between Calle del Caballero de Gracia and the Convento de las Vallecas. Angélica and I stood in the street, unsure what to do, until she suggested that we take shelter beneath an arcade. We sat down on a bench hidden behind a stone pillar. It was getting colder and so I offered her my cloak, which she had already refused twice. This time she accepted, on condition that it serve to cover us both. And so I placed it over my shoulders and hers, which meant, of course, that we had to sit very close. You can imagine my state of mind. Head spinning, I sat resting my hands on the guard of my sword, filled by an inner excitement that prevented me from stringing two thoughts together. She, with lovely ease, kept watch on the house opposite. She seemed tenser now, but still showed a serenity and self-control admirable in a girl of her age and social class. We talked quietly, our shoulders touching. She still would not tell me what we were doing there.

“Later,” she would say each time I asked.

The roof of the arcade hid the moon, and her face was in shadow, a dark profile at my side. I was aware of the warmth of her body. I felt like someone who has willingly placed his neck in the hangman’s noose, but I didn’t care a jot. Angélica was beside me, and I would not have changed places with the safest, happiest man on earth.

“It isn’t really important,” I insisted. “I’d just like to know more.”

“About what?”

“About this madness you’re involved in.”

A mischievous silence ensued. Then she said gleefully:

“And in which you’re now involved too.”

“That’s precisely what worries me: not knowing what it is I’m involved in.”

“You’ll find out.”

“I’m sure I will, but the last time that happened, I found myself surrounded by half a dozen killers, and the time before that, I ended up in one of the Inquisition’s dungeons.”

“I thought you were a bright, bold lad, Señor Balboa. Don’t you trust me?”

I hesitated before responding. This is what the devil does, I thought, he toys with people, with ambition, vanity, lust, fear. Even with people’s hearts. It is written: “All these things will I give you, if you fall down and worship me.” An intelligent devil doesn’t need to lie.

“Of course I trust you,” I said.

I heard her laugh softly. Then she moved a little closer to me under the cloak.

“You’re a fool,” she concluded very sweetly.

And she kissed me again, or, to be exact, we kissed each other, not once, but many times; and I put my arm around her shoulders and tentatively caressed her neck and shoulders and then, when she offered no resistance, I ran my hand very gently over the female curves beneath her velvet doublet. She laughed softly, her lips still pressed to mine, coming closer, then drawing back when my desire grew too intense. I swear to you, dear reader, that even if I had seen the fires of hell before me, I would have followed Angélica without a tremor, wherever she chose to lead me, prepared to defend her with my sword and to snatch her from the arms of Lucifer himself. At the risk, or, rather, the certainty of eternal damnation.

All of a sudden she pulled away. One of the two men had come out into the street. I threw off the cloak and stood up in order to get a better view. The man remained utterly still, as if watching or waiting. He remained like that for a while, then began pacing up and down, and I feared he might see us. Finally, his attention seemed to focus on the far end of the street. I followed his gaze and saw the silhouette of someone approaching, wearing hat, long cloak, and sword. He was walking down the middle of the street, as if he distrusted the shadows cast by the walls. He kept walking until he reached the other man. I noticed that his pace gradually slackened until they were both standing face-to-face. There was something about the way the second man moved that was familiar to me, especially the way in which he folded back his cloak to free up his sword. I stepped forward slightly, keeping close to the stone pillar, so that I could see more clearly. In the moonlight, I was astonished to discover that the new arrival was Captain Alatriste.

The first man, the stranger, was still there in the middle of the street, his cloak enveloping his face so that only his eyes were visible beneath the brim of his hat. In response, Diego Alatriste folded his cloak back over his left shoulder. His hand was already lightly touching the hilt of his sword when he stopped in front of the man blocking his way. He studied him with a practiced eye, calm, silent. If he’s alone, he decided, he’s either very brave, a professional swordsman, or else he’s carrying a pistol. Or perhaps all three. And at worst, he concluded, looking out of the corner of his eye, there are other men nearby. The question was this: Was he waiting for him or for someone else? At that hour, and outside that particular house, there was little doubt about the matter. It wasn’t Gonzalo Moscatel. The butcher was burlier and broader, and, in any case, he wasn’t the kind of man to resolve these things in person. Perhaps the fellow was a hired killer earning his daily bread, although he must be very good indeed, Alatriste thought, if, knowing, as he must, who he was waiting for, he had brought no one with him to help.

“Come no farther, sir,” said the stranger.

These words were spoken in a surprisingly educated and very polite voice, slightly muffled by the cloak.

“Says who?” asked Alatriste.

“Someone who can.”

This was not a good start. The captain smoothed his mustache and then lowered his hand so that it rested on the large brass buckle of his belt. There seemed little point in prolonging the conversation. The only question was whether or not the rogue was alone. He cast another quick glance to right and left. There was something very odd about all this.

“To business, then,” he said, unsheathing his sword.

The other man did not even push back his cloak. He stood very still with his back to the moonlight, looking at the captain’s bare glinting blade.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” he said.

He did not bother to call him “sir” this time. He was either someone who knew him well or was foolish enough to provoke him by this lack of respect.

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t suit me to do so.”

Alatriste raised his sword and leveled the tip at the other man’s face.

“Come on,” he said, “fight, damn you.”

Seeing the steel tip so near, the stranger retreated and folded back his cloak. His face was still concealed by the shadow cast by the brim of his hat, but Alatriste could now see what weapons he had on him. He had not one pistol at his waist, but two. And his jerkin appeared to be double in thickness. “He’s either a fully fledged ruffian or an exceptionally prudent gentleman,” Alatriste concluded. “He’s certainly no lamb to the slaughter. If he so much as touches the handle of one of those pistols, I’ll stick a foot of steel through his throat before he can say a word.”

“I’m not going to fight with you, my friend,” said the other man.

“He’s making it very easy for me,” thought the captain. “Now he’s addressing me as ‘friend.’ He’s giving me the perfect motive to skewer him, unless that familiar tone of voice has some justification and I know him well enough for him to poke his nose into my business and my nocturnal affairs and get away with it. Besides, it’s late. Let’s finish the business now.”

He settled his hat more firmly on his head and undid the clasp of his cloak, letting his cloak fall to the ground. Then he took a step forward, ready to attack, keeping a close eye on his opponent’s pistols and meanwhile reaching with his left hand for his dagger. Seeing Alatriste closing on him, the other man took another step back.

“For heaven’s sake, Alatriste,” he muttered. “Do you still not know who I am?”

The tone this time was angry, even arrogant, and now the captain thought he recognized that voice, unmuffled now by the cloak. He hesitated and withheld the sword-thrust he was aching to make.

“Is that you, Count?”

“The same.”

There was a long silence. It was Guadalmedina in person. Still keeping hold of sword and knife, Alatriste was trying to make sense of this new situation.

“And what the devil,” he said at last, “are you doing here?”

“Trying to prevent you from ruining your life.”

Another silence. Alatriste was thinking about what the count had just said. Quevedo’s warnings and various other clues all fitted perfectly. Christ’s blood! Given what a large place the world was, what bad luck to have met with such a rival. And as if that were not enough, there was Guadalmedina in the middle, as intermediary.

“My life is my business,” he retorted.

“And that of your friends?”

“Tell me why I can’t come any farther.”

“I can’t do that.”

Alatriste shook his head thoughtfully, then looked at his sword and his dagger. “We are what we are,” he thought. “My reputation is all, and I have no other.”

“I’m expected,” he said.

The count remained impassive. He was a skilled swordsman, as the captain knew all too well: steady on his feet and quick with his hand, and with that cold, scornful brand of courage favored by the Spanish nobility. Naturally, he wasn’t as good as the captain, but chance and darkness always left room for the unexpected. In addition to which, he had two pistols.

“Your place has been taken,” said Guadalmedina.

“I’d rather find that out for myself.”

“You’ll have to kill me first, or let me kill you.”

He had said this with no hint of boastfulness or menace, he was simply stating an inevitable fact, like one friend confiding quietly in another. The count was also what he was, and had his and other people’s reputations to protect.

Alatriste replied in the same tone:

“Don’t make me do this.”

And he took a step forward. The count stayed where he was, his sword still in its sheath, but with the two pistols in his belt clearly visible. And he knew how to use them. Alatriste had seen him do so only a few months before, in Seville, to dispatch a constable without even giving him time to make his confession.

“She’s only a woman,” said Guadalmedina. “There are hundreds of women in Madrid.” His tone was friendly, reassuring. “Are you going to ruin your life for an actress?”

The captain took a while to reply.

“It doesn’t matter who she is,” he said at last. “That’s the least of it.”

The count gave a sad sigh, as if he had known what the captain’s answer would be. Then he took out his sword and adopted the en garde position, his left hand hovering near the handle of one of his pistols. Alatriste raised both his weapons, resigned to his fate, knowing as he did so that the ground was opening up at his feet.

When I saw the stranger unsheathe his sword—at that distance, I still did not know who he was, even though his face was now uncovered—I took a step forward, but Angélica grabbed me and forced me to remain hidden behind the pillar.

“It’s not our affair,” she whispered.

I looked at her as if she were mad.

“What are you talking about?” I exclaimed. “That’s Captain Alatriste.”

She didn’t appear in the least surprised. Her grip on my arm tightened.

“And do you want him to know that we’ve been spying on him?”

That gave me pause for thought. How could I explain to the captain what I was doing there at that hour of the night?

“If you leave, you’ll be betraying me,” added Angélica. “Your friend Batiste is quite capable of resolving his own affairs.”

“What’s going on,” I asked myself, bewildered. “What’s happening here, and what have I and the captain to do with it all? What has she got to do with it?”

“Besides, you can’t leave me here alone,” she said.

My mind fogged. She was still clinging to my arm, so close that I could feel her breath on my face. I felt ashamed not to go to my master’s aid, but if I abandoned Angélica, or betrayed her presence there, I would feel another kind of shame. A wave of heat rushed to my face. I rested my forehead on the cold stone while, with my eyes, I devoured the scene being played out in the street. I was thinking about the pistols I had seen tucked in the belt of the man when he left the Tavern of the Dog, and that worried me greatly. Even the best blade in the world was helpless against a bullet fired from four feet away.

“I have to leave you,” I said to Angélica.

“Don’t even consider it.”

Her tone had changed from plea to warning, but my thoughts were fixed now on what was going on there right before my eyes. After a pause during which both men, sword in hand, stared at each other without moving, my master finally took a step forward and they touched blades. At that point, I wrested myself from Angélica’s grasp, unsheathed my sword, and went to the captain’s aid.

Diego Alatriste heard footsteps running toward him and thought to himself that Guadalmedina was not, after all, alone, and that, what with the pistol the latter was now holding in his hand, things were clearly about to get very nasty indeed. “I’d better look sharp,” he decided, “or I’ll be done for.” His opponent was defending himself with his sword and moving steadily backward, waiting for a chance to cock and fire the pistol he was holding in his other hand. Fortunately for Alatriste, this operation required two hands, and so he dealt a high slicing thrust to keep the count’s right hand busy, while he considered the best way to wound and, if possible, not to kill. Those other footsteps were coming nearer; his next move would require great skill, for his life depended on it. He made a stabbing movement with his dagger, then pretended to step back, thus apparently giving Guadalmedina the space he needed; and just when the latter thought he had time to cock his pistol and lowered his sword hand in order to grip the barrel, the captain lunged at that arm, causing the pistol to fall to the ground and the count to go reeling backward, cursing. “I think I hit flesh,” thought Alatriste; then again, the count was cursing rather than moaning, although in men of their kind, cursing and moaning were one and the same. Meanwhile, there was the third party in the dispute to deal with, a shadow running forward, a flash of steel in its hand; and Alatriste realized that Guadalmedina, who had another pistol in his belt, still posed a mortal danger. “I must finish it,” he decided, “now.” The count had also heard the approaching footsteps, yet he looked bewildered rather than cheered. He glanced behind him, losing precious time, and before he could compose himself, Alatriste—taking advantage of that moment, and still conscious of the other man running toward him—calculated the distance with expert eye, made a low feint toward Guadalmedina’s groin, and when the count, caught off guard, desperately parried, he raised his sword again, ready to lunge forward either to wound or to kill, he no longer cared.

“Captain!” I shouted.

I didn’t want him to run me through in the darkness, before he could recognize me. I saw him stop, sword raised, staring at me, and saw his opponent do the same. I pointed my blade at the latter, who, finding himself attacked from behind, drew aside, evidently confused, but still defending himself as best he could.

“For the love of God, Alatriste,” he said, “what are you doing getting the boy involved in all this?”

I froze when I heard that voice. I lowered my sword, staring at my master’s opponent, whose face I could now see in the moonlight.

“What are you doing here?” the captain asked me.

His voice sounded as sharp and metallic as his sword. I suddenly felt terribly hot, and beneath my doublet my sweat-drenched shirt stuck to my body. The night was spinning around and around inside and outside my head.

“I thought . . .” I stuttered.

“Just what did you think?”

I fell silent, embarrassed and incapable of saying another word. Guadalmedina was watching us in astonishment. He was clasping his sword under his right arm and painfully clutching the upper part of his left arm.

“You’re mad, Alatriste,” he said.

I saw the captain raise the hand holding the dagger, as if asking for time to think. From beneath the broad brim of his hat, his pale, steely eyes drilled into me.

“What are you doing here?” he asked again.

The tone in which he spoke was so murderous, I swear I felt afraid.

“I followed you,” I lied.

I swallowed hard. I imagined Angélica hidden in the arcade, watching me from a distance. Or perhaps she had left already. My pathetic thread of a voice grew stronger.

“I was afraid something bad might happen to you.”

“You’re mad, both of you,” commented Guadalmedina.

Nevertheless, he seemed relieved, as if my presence offered him an unexpected way out of this episode, an honorable solution, whereas before the only one had been for them to cut each other to pieces.

“It would,” he said, “be in everyone’s best interests to be reasonable.”

“And what do you mean by that?” asked the captain.

The count glanced over at the house, which was still silent and in darkness. Then he shrugged.

“Let’s leave things as they are for tonight.”

That “for tonight” spoke volumes. I realized, sadly, that, for Guadalmedina, the house in Calle de los Peligros and the reason for the dispute were of little importance now. He and Diego Alatriste had exchanged sword thrusts, and that brought with it certain obligations. It broke certain rules and implied certain duties. The fight was postponed for the moment, but not forgotten. Despite their long friendship, Álvaro de la Marca was who he was, and his opponent was a mere soldier who possessed only his sword and not even a patch of ground to call his grave. After what had happened, anyone else in the count’s position would have had the captain clapped in irons and thrown in a dungeon, or else consigned to the galleys, if, that is, he managed to resist the impulse to have him murdered. Álvaro de la Marca, however, was made of sterner stuff. Perhaps, like Captain Alatriste, he thought that once words or blades have been unsheathed it was impossible simply to return them to the scabbard. It could all be sorted out later on, calmly and in the appropriate place, where they would have only themselves to consider.

The captain was looking at me, and his eyes still shone in the darkness. Finally, and very slowly, as if mulling something over, he put away both sword and dagger. He exchanged a silent look with Guadalmedina, then placed one hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t do that again,” he said sullenly.

His iron fingers were gripping my shoulder so tightly they hurt. He brought his face close to mine and looked at me hard, his aquiline nose prominent above his mustache. He smelled as he always did, of leather and wine and metal. I tried to free myself, but he did not loosen his grip.

“Don’t ever follow me again,” he said. “Ever.”

And inside, I writhed in shame and remorse.