The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet

9. THE SWORD AND THE DAGGER

I must confess to feeling terrified, and with good reason. The Count of Guadalmedina in person had sought me out, and now we were striding along together beneath the arches of El Escorial’s main courtyard. I had been in don Francisco de Quevedo’s room, engaged in making a fair copy of some lines from his new play, when Guadalmedina appeared at the door, and Quevedo barely had time to shoot me a somber, cautionary glance before the count ordered me to follow him. The count’s elegant cape, which he wore draped over his left shoulder, swayed as he strode angrily ahead of me, his left hand on the hilt of his sword and his impatient footsteps echoing along that eastern side of the courtyard. We passed the guard, went up the small staircase adjoining the royal tennis court, and emerged onto the upper floor.

“Wait here,” he said.

I did as I was told, and he disappeared through a door. I was standing in a dreary hallway of gray granite, no tapestries, paintings, or any other ornament in evidence, and all that cold stone made me shiver. I shivered still more when the count reappeared and ordered me curtly to come in, for I found myself entering a long gallery with a painted ceiling and walls adorned with frescoes depicting scenes of war. The only furniture was a chair and a table containing writing implements. Along one wall there were nine windows that opened onto an inner courtyard, and the light from these windows lit up the fresco on the opposite wall, which showed Christian knights fighting Moors and recorded the battle in all its military detail. This was the first time I had entered the Hall of Battles, and I was far from imagining then that, in time, those paintings commemorating the victory at Higueruela, the battle of San Quintín, and the attack on the Azores would be as familiar to me as the rest of the royal palace when, years later, I was made lieutenant and then captain of King Philip IV’s guard. At that moment, however, the Íñigo Balboa walking beside the Count of Guadalmedina was merely a frightened boy, incapable of appreciating the magnificent paintings decorating the gallery. My five senses were all focused on the imposing figure waiting at the far end, next to the last of the nine windows. He was a heavily built man, with a thick, closely trimmed beard and a fearsome mustache that grew bushier at the ends. He was wearing a costume made of brown lamé with the green cross of Alcántara on his breast, and his large, powerful head sat on a thick neck barely contained by a starched ruff. As I approached, he fixed me with his dark, intelligent eyes, as threatening as two harquebuses; and at the time I am describing, those eyes could send a shudder of fear throughout the whole of Europe.

“This is the boy,” said Guadalmedina.

The count-duke, His Catholic Majesty’s favorite and adviser, nodded almost imperceptibly, without taking his eyes off me. In one hand he was holding a piece of paper, and in the other a cup of thick, hot chocolate.

“When is this Alatriste fellow supposed to arrive?” he asked Guadalmedina.

“At sunset, I believe. He has instructions to present himself here as soon as possible.”

Olivares leaned slightly toward me. Hearing him say my master’s name had left me speechless.

“Are you Íñigo Balboa?”

I nodded, incapable of uttering a word, while I struggled to put my thoughts in order. In between sips of chocolate, the count-duke was reading aloud from the piece of paper he was holding: “. . . born in Oñate, Guipúzcoa, the son of a soldier who died in Flanders, servant to Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, better known as Captain Alatriste, et cetera. A soldier’s page in the old Cartagena regiment. Present at the taking of Oudkerk, at the battles of Ruyter Mill and Terheyden, the siege of Breda . . .” After each Flemish name, he glanced up as if to compare the fact with my evident youth. “And before that, there had been an auto-da-fé in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, in sixteen hundred and twenty-three.

“Ah, yes, I remember now,” he said, looking at me more attentively now, meanwhile putting his cup down on the table. “Some business with the Holy Office of the Inquisition.”

It was not at all reassuring to know that one’s biography was so precisely documented, and the memory of my brush with the Inquisition did nothing to calm my spirits. However, the question that followed transformed my bewilderment into panic.

“What happened in Camino de las Minillas?”

I looked at Álvaro de la Marca, who nodded reassuringly.

“You can speak openly to His Excellency,” he said. “He is fully informed.”

I continued to eye him suspiciously. When we met in Juan Vicuña’s gambling den, I had described to him the events of that ill-starred night on condition that he told no one until Captain Alatriste had spoken to him. The captain had not yet arrived; Guadalmedina, who was, after all, a courtier, had not played fair. Or perhaps he was merely covering his back.

“I don’t know anything about the captain,” I stammered.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Guadalmedina. “You were there with him and with the man who died. Tell His Excellency exactly what happened.”

I turned to the count-duke. He was still observing me with alarming fixity. That man bore on his shoulders the most powerful monarchy on earth; he could move whole armies across seas and mountains just by lifting an eyebrow. And there was I, trembling inside like a leaf and about to tell him no.

“No,” I said.

The count-duke blinked.

“Have you gone mad?” exclaimed Guadalmedina.

The count-duke still did not take his eyes off me, although his gaze seemed more curious now than angry.

“By my life, I’ll . . .” began Guadalmedina threateningly, taking a step toward me.

Olivares stopped him by making the very slightest of movements with his left hand. Then he glanced back at the piece of paper and folded it in four before putting it away.

“Why not?” he asked me.

He did so almost gently. I looked across at the windows and chimneys on the far side of the courtyard, at the blue-gray slate tiles lit by the setting sun. Then I shrugged my shoulders and said nothing.

“Ye gods,” said Guadalmedina, “I’ll make you loosen that tongue of yours.”

The count-duke again brought him up short, with that same slight gesture. He seemed to be able to see into every corner of my mind.

“He is, of course, your friend,” he said at last.

I nodded. After a moment, the count-duke nodded too.

“I understand,” he said.

He took a few steps about the gallery, stopping by a fresco that showed ranks of Spanish infantry, bristling with pikes, all grouped around the cross of San Andrés, marching toward the enemy. Sword in hand, smeared with gunpowder, hoarse with shouting out the name of Spain, I, too, had once belonged to those ranks, I thought bitterly, as had Captain Alatriste. Despite that, there we were. I noticed that the count-duke saw that I was looking at the scene and read my thoughts. The hint of a smile softened his features.

“I believe your master is innocent,” he said. “You have my word.”

I studied the imposing figure standing before me. I had no illusions. I had some experience of life, and I knew perfectly well that the kindness being shown to me by the most powerful man in Spain—indeed, in the world—was nothing but a highly intelligent ploy, as one would expect from a man capable of applying all his talents to the vast enterprise that was his one obsession: that of making his nation great, Catholic, and powerful, and defending it on land and sea against English, French, Dutch, Turks, against the world in general, for the Spanish empire was so vast and so feared that other countries could hope to achieve their own ambitions only at the expense of ours. As far as the count-duke was concerned, such an enterprise justified any means. I realized that he would use the same measured, patient tone were he issuing the order to have me quartered alive, and, if it came to that, he would do so with no more qualms than he would have about squashing a fly. I was merely the humblest of pawns on the complex chessboard where Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, was playing the very dangerous game of being the king’s favorite. Much later on, when life again placed me in his path, I was able to confirm that while our king’s all-powerful favorite never hesitated to sacrifice as many pawns as might prove necessary, he never let go of a piece, however modest, as long as he believed it could be useful to him.

Anyway, that afternoon in the Hall of Battles, I saw that every path was blocked, and so I plucked up my courage. After all, Guadalmedina would only have passed on what I had confided to him, nothing more. There was no harm in repeating that. As for the rest, including Angélica de Alquézar’s role in the conspiracy, that was another matter entirely. Guadalmedina could not talk about what he did not know, and I—for in my youthful chivalry I was ingenuous in the extreme—would not be the one to utter the name of my lady in the presence of the count-duke.

“Don Álvaro de la Marca,” I said, “has told Your Excellency the truth . . .”

At that point, I suddenly realized what the count-duke’s first words meant, and the realization troubled me greatly: Captain Alatriste’s journey to El Escorial was not a secret. He and Guadalmedina both knew about it, and I wondered who else might know, and wondered, too, if that information—for bad news travels faster than good—had also reached the ears of our enemies.

Soon after the pass, where the broom and the rocks gave way to oak woods and the path grew flatter and straighter, the horse began to hobble. Diego Alatriste dismounted and looked at the creature’s hooves, only to find that one of its left shoes had lost two nails and was coming loose. Cagafuego had not attached to the saddle a bag containing the requisite tools and so he had to fix the shoe as best he could, hammering the nails back in with a large stone. He had no idea how long this repair would last, but the next staging post was less than a league away. He remounted and, doing his best not to ride the horse too hard, and bending over every now and then to check the loose shoe, he continued on his way. He rode slowly for nearly an hour until—in the distance, to the right and with the still snowy peaks of the Guadarrama in the background—he could make out the granite tower and the roofs of the dozen or so houses that made up the little village of Galapagar. The road did not go into the village, but continued on, and when he reached the crossroads, Alatriste dismounted outside the coaching inn. He entrusted the horse to the farrier, took a quick look at the other horses resting in the stable and noticed in passing that two mounts were tethered outside, ready and saddled up. Then he went and sat down on the vine-covered porch of the village inn. Half a dozen mule drivers were playing cards near the wall; a man dressed in country fashion and with a sword at his belt was standing nearby, watching the game; and a cleric accompanied by a servant and two mules laden down with various bundles and trunks, was seated at another table, eating pigs’ trotters and brushing away the flies from his plate. The captain greeted the cleric, lightly touching the brim of his hat.

“The peace of God be with you,” said the cleric, his mouth full.

A serving wench brought Alatriste some wine, and he drank thirstily, stretched out his legs, and put his sword down on one side while he watched the farrier work. Then he estimated the height of the sun and made his calculations. It was a further two leagues, more or less, to El Escorial; this meant that, with the horse newly shod and making good speed, and as long as the intervening streams—the Charcón and the Ladrón—were not running too high and could be forded on the road itself, he would be at the palace by midafternoon. Pleased with this thought, he finished off the wine, put a coin down on the table, buckled on his sword, and went over to the farrier, who was finishing his task.

“Oh, forgive me, sir.”

Alatriste had not noticed the man coming out of the inn and almost bumped into him. He was a burly, bearded fellow, dressed country style, in gaiters and a huntsman’s hat, like the man watching the muleteers’ card game. Alatriste did not know him. He judged him to be a poacher or a gamekeeper, for he wore a short sword in a leather baldric and a hunting knife. The stranger accepted his apology with a curt nod of the head, but looked at him long and hard, and while the captain was walking over to the stable, he was aware that the man was still watching him. This, he thought, was odd, and it made him feel uneasy. As he was paying the farrier amid the buzz of horseflies, he glanced back out of the corner of his eye. The man was still watching him from the porch. Alatriste felt even more worried when, as he put his foot in the stirrup and hoisted himself up onto the horse, he saw the man exchange a look with the other fellow standing next to the muleteers. For some reason he aroused the man’s curiosity, and he could think of no reason that augured well.

Thus, cautiously looking over his shoulder to see if they were following him, he dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks and set off for El Escorial.

“There isn’t a stage in the world,” said don Francisco de Quevedo, “to compare with this.”

They were sitting in a niche in the wall beneath the granite colonnade of the Casa de la Compaña, watching the rehearsals for The Sword and the Dagger in the magnificent El Escorial gardens. These were at least a hundred feet wide and planted with lush clumps of flowers as tall as a man and with topiary hedges and mazes, all of which provided a setting for the dozen small fountains in which the waters sang and from which the birds drank. Protected from the north wind by the palace-monastery, whose walls were covered with trellises thick with jasmine and musk roses, the gardens formed a pleasant terrace along the south-facing façade of the building, a broad mirador that gave onto a large pond full of ducks and swans. Not far off, to the south and west, one could see the imposing mountains in tones of blue, gray, and green, and in the distance, to the east, the vast fields and royal forests that extended all the way to Madrid.

“In matters of the heart

When you very least suspect it,

From a bow flies a dart,

With your honor as its target.”

We heard the voice of María de Castro rehearsing the opening lines of the second act. Hers was, without a doubt, the sweetest voice in Spain, skillfully trained by her husband, who, in that respect, although not in others, always ruled with a firm hand. The sound of her voice was interrupted occasionally by hammering from the scene-shifters, and Cózar, who was using don Francisco’s script as a prompt, would call for silence as majestically as an archbishop from Liège or a grand duke from Moscow, characters whose mannerisms he had honed on the stage. The play was to be performed there, in the open air. To this end, a stage had been set up as well as a large awning to protect the royal personages and the main guests from sun or rain. It was said that the count-duke was spending ten thousand escudos on fêting the king and queen and their guests with both play and party.

This is truly not a lie:

When in love, we who die

Live, and in living,

We as yet are dying.

These, by the way, were not lines of which don Francisco was particularly proud, but as he himself remarked to me in private, they were worth exactly what he was being paid for them. Besides, such plays on words, verbal sleights of hand, and paradoxes were very much to the taste of the public who attended the theater, from the king himself down to the most insignificant rogue, including the innkeeper Tabarca’s mosqueteros. And so, in the opinion of the poet—who was a great admirer of Lope de Vega, but who liked to put everyone in his proper place—if the Phoenix could sometimes allow himself such knowing jokes to round out an act or draw applause in a particular scene, he saw no reason why he should not do the same. What mattered, he said, was not that a man of his talent could produce such lines as easily as a Moor could make fritters, but that they amused the king, the queen, and their guests, and, more especially, the count-duke, who held the purse strings.

“The captain should be here soon,” Quevedo said suddenly.

I turned to look at him, grateful that he should still be thinking of my master. I found, however, that he was watching María de Castro as impassively as if he had not spoken a word, and indeed he said nothing more. For my part, I could not stop thinking about Captain Alatriste either, still less after my interview, given most reluctantly, with the king’s favorite. I was hoping that once the captain arrived and met with Guadalmedina everything would be resolved and our lives would return to normal. As for his relationship with La Castro—she was asking now for some cooling water to drink, and her husband solicitously had some brought for her—I had no doubt that he would cease to play the gallant to that very dangerous leading lady. As for the lovely actress herself, I was surprised how at ease she seemed to be in El Escorial. I understood then how an arrogant, self-confident woman, raised to such heights, might grow quite puffed up with vanity when she enjoyed the favor of a king or some other powerful man. Needless to say, the actress and the queen never met; the actresses only entered the palace garden for rehearsals and none were actually lodging on the palace grounds. It was also said that the king had already made the occasional night visit to La Castro, this time unmolested by anyone, still less by the husband, for it was well known that Cózar slept very soundly indeed and could snore like a saint even with his eyes wide open. All of this was common knowledge and would soon reach the ears of the queen. However, the daughter of Henri IV had been brought up as a princess and knew that such matters must be accepted as part of her role. Isabel de Borbón was always a model queen and lady, which is why the people loved and respected her until her death; and no one could imagine the tears of humiliation our unhappy queen would shed in the privacy of her rooms over her august husband’s licentious behavior, which would, in time, so rumor had it, engender as many as twenty-three royal bastards. In my view, the origin of the queen’s invincible loathing for El Escorial—she would only return there to be buried—lay not just in the building’s grim atmosphere, which fitted so ill with her own cheerful disposition, but in memories of her husband’s dalliance with La Castro, whose moment of triumph, by the way, was short-lived, for she was soon to be replaced in the king’s capricious favors by another actress, the sixteen-year-old María Calderón. Philip IV was always more attracted to lowborn women—actresses, kitchen maids, serving wenches, and whores—than to ladies of the court. It must be said, though, that unlike in France, where some royal mistresses ended up having more power than certain queens, in Spain, appearances were always preserved and no courtesan ever held sway at court. Prim old Castile, which had embraced the rigid Burgundy etiquette brought from Ghent by the emperor Charles, insisted that nothing less than an abyss should separate the majesty of its monarchs from the rest of vulgar humanity. This is why, once the affair was over—for no one could ride a horse once ridden by the king nor enjoy a woman whom he had made his mistress—the king’s concubines were usually forced to enter a convent, as were any daughters born of such illegitimate loves. This provoked one court wit to pen the following inevitable lines:

Traveler, this house, this monument

Is not what it appears:

The king first made it a bawdy house

And then a holy convent.

Such incidents, plus the money squandered on parties, masked balls, and festive lights, on corruption, wars, and bad governance, all contribute to painting a moral portrait of the Spain of that time, which, though still a powerful and much-feared nation, was unstoppably going to the devil. Our lethargic king was full of good intentions, but incapable of doing his duty; during his long forty-four-year reign, he placed all responsibility in the hands of others and devoted himself to fornicating, hunting, indulging his every pleasure, and plundering the nation’s coffers. Meanwhile, we lost Rosellón and Portugal; Catalonia, Sicily, and Naples rose up in revolt; Andalusian and Aragonese nobles conspired against us; and our regiments, unpaid and therefore hungry and indisciplined, could only stand by, impassive and silent, still faithful to their glorious legend, and allow themselves to be destroyed. To quote the admirable last line—with all due respect to Señor de Quevedo—of don Luis de Góngora’s sonnet “On the Fleeting Nature of Beauty and Life,” Spain was reduced to “earth, smoke, dust, and shadow—naught.”

As Captain Alatriste said to me once during a mutiny near Breda: “Your king is your king.” Philip IV was the monarch Fate gave me, and I had no other; he was the only king that men of my class and my century knew. No one offered us a choice. And that is why I continued to fight for him and was loyal to him until his death, both as an innocent youth and as a scornful, clear-sighted, battle-worn man, and much later, too, in my more charitable maturity, when, as captain of his guard, I saw him transformed into a prematurely old man, bent beneath the burden of defeat, disappointment, and regret, broken by the ruin of his nation and by the blows of life itself. I used to accompany him alone to El Escorial, where he would spend long hours in silence in the solitude of that ghostly pantheon containing the illustrious remains of his ancestors, the kings whose mighty inheritance he had so wretchedly squandered. The Spain that came to rest on his shoulders was very great indeed, and he, alas for us, was not a man to bear such a weight.

He had allowed himself to be ambushed in the most ridiculous fashion, but there was no time now for lamentations. Resigned to the inevitable, Diego Alatriste dug his spurs in hard and forced his horse to ford the stream, splashing noisily through the water. The two horsemen were closing on him, but the people he was really worried about were two new arrivals, who had emerged out of the trees on the opposite bank and were riding toward him with what were clearly evil intentions.

He looked about him to see what possibilities lay open to him. He had sensed danger ever since he left the inn at Galapagar; then, as he was riding down the hill toward the stream and could just make out the gray mass of El Escorial in the distance, he realized that the men he had seen at the inn were following him. His professional instincts told him at once who they were. He had immediately spurred the bay on, hoping to force the horse across the stream and up the hill as quickly as possible with the intention of reaching the nearby woods, where he would at least have the advantage of surprise. However, the appearance of two more horsemen made the situation clear. They were obviously what, in the army, he would have called “beaters”—a patrol sent out to look for someone—and given the way things stood, the captain had few doubts about who that “someone” was.

His horse almost slipped on the pebbles in the streambed but managed to make it to the other side without falling, about twenty paces ahead of the men galloping toward him along the bank. The captain observed them with a practiced eye: they both had bushy mustaches, were dressed as hunters or gamekeepers, armed with pistols and swords, and one of them had a harquebus resting crosswise on his saddle. They were obviously professionals. The captain glanced behind him and saw the two men from the inn urging on their mounts and racing down the hill from Galapagar. It was all as clear as day. He pulled up his horse and, gripping the reins between his teeth, quietly drew his pistol and cocked it. Then he cocked the other pistol which he had ready in the holster on the saddle-tree. He was not expert in such fighting methods, but dismounting in order to face four mounted men would have been madness. The wryly consoling thought occurred to him that whether on foot, on horseback, or accompanied by a chaconne, there was nothing for it but to fight. When the two men on the bank were about four feet away, he stood up in the stirrups, took careful aim, arm outstretched, and had time enough, as he squeezed the trigger and unleashed a bullet, to see the look on the face of the man he had singled out. He would have killed him, too, if his own horse hadn’t started and caused his aim to suffer. The noise and the flash caused the rider with the harquebus to pull his horse up short to avoid the shot. His companion did the same, tugging on the reins. This gave Alatriste time to wheel his horse around, put the discharged pistol away, and take out the other. With this in his hand, he intended to drive his horse forward and get closer, so as not to miss the second time. His mount, however, was no war horse and, terrified by the noise of the pistol shot, set off at a gallop downstream. Cursing, Alatriste found himself with his back to the men and unable to take proper aim. He yanked so hard at the reins that the horse reared up, almost unseating him. When he finally managed to regain control, he had a man on either side of him, each with a pistol in his hand, and the men from the inn were now splashing their way toward him across the stream. They had their swords unsheathed, but the captain was more concerned about the pistols threatening him on either flank. And so he commended himself to the devil, raised his pistol and shot the nearer man at point-blank range. This time, he saw the man slump back onto his horse’s rump, one leg sticking up and the other caught in the stirrup. Then, throwing down the pistol and grabbing his sword, Alatriste watched as the other man raised his pistol and aimed it in his direction. Behind the pistol, Alatriste could see the man’s fierce eyes, as fixed and black as the mouth of the barrel pointing straight at him. “This is where it all ends,” he thought, “and there’s nothing to be done about it.” He brandished his sword anyway, in an attempt at least, with that one last impulse, to cut down the bastard who was about to kill him. And then, to his surprise, he saw that the black hole of the barrel was aimed instead at his horse’s head, and found himself splattered by the creature’s blood and brains. He fell forward onto the dead beast and was thrown off onto the stony bank. Dazed, he tried to get up, but his strength failed him and he lay motionless, his face pressed into the mud. Shit. His back hurt as badly as if he had broken his spine. He glanced wildly around for his sword, but saw only a pair of boots and spurs in front of him. One of the boots kicked him in the face, and he lost consciousness.

My anxiety began to grow at the hour of the angelus, when don Francisco de Quevedo, looking very somber, came to tell me that my master had still not presented himself to the Count of Guadalmedina, and that the latter was growing impatient. Gripped by dark thoughts, I went outside and sat on the parapet along the east-facing esplanade, known as La Lonja, from where I could see the road from Madrid. I remained there until the sun, veiled at the last moment by ugly gray clouds, finally sank behind the mountains. Then, feeling uneasy, I went in search of don Francisco but failed to find him. I wanted to go into the main courtyard, but the archers on guard barred my way, saying that the king and queen and their guests were attending a musical evening in the little temple. I asked them to tell don Álvaro de la Marca that I wished to speak to him, but the sergeant told me that this was not an opportune moment and that I should wait until the gathering was over or else go and bother someone else. Finally, an acquaintance of don Francisco’s whom I met at the foot of the main staircase told me that don Francisco had gone to dine at the Cañada Real, through the archway opposite the palace, which was where he usually ate. And so I set off again, once more crossing the esplanade and going up the slight hill to the archway, where I turned left and made my way to the inn.

It was a small, pleasant place, lit by tallow candles set in lanterns. The walls, made of the same granite as the palace, were adorned with hams, sausages, and strings of garlic. There was a large stove tended by the mistress of the house, and the innkeeper himself waited at table. I found don Francisco de Quevedo, María de Castro, and her husband all seated there. The poet shot me a questioning glance, frowned when I shook my head, then invited me to join them.

“I believe you know my young friend,” he said.

They did indeed know me, especially La Castro. The lovely actress welcomed me with a smile, and her husband with an ironic and exaggeratedly friendly gesture, for he knew who my master was. They had just finished eating a dish of braised trout, it being Friday, and offered me what was left. My stomach, alas, was too troubled, and I dined instead on a little bread dipped in wine. It was no ordinary wine, either, and that night Rafael de Cózar had clearly drunk his fair share, for he had the red eyes and thick tongue of someone who has paid generous tribute to the jug. The innkeeper brought more wine, this time a sweet Pedro Ximénez. María de Castro—whose outfit, a close-fitting bodice and long riding skirt, was adorned with at least fifty escudos’ worth of Flemish lace at neck, wrist, and hem—was drinking prettily and only a little at a time; don Francisco was drinking equally moderately, while Cózar drank on like a man dying of thirst. Between sips of wine, the three continued discussing things theatrical—what gestures to make at a particular moment, or how to say this or that line—while I awaited the right moment to speak to don Francisco alone. Despite my great unease, I was nonetheless able to admire once more the beauty of the woman for whose sake the captain had set himself against the king’s will. What shook me was the nonchalance with which María de Castro threw back her head to laugh, sipped her wine, played with the round coral earrings that hung from her lovely ears, or looked at her husband, at don Francisco, and at me in the particular way she had of looking at men, making each of us feel that she had singled us out as the only man on earth. I could not help thinking of Angélica de Alquézar, and that made me wonder if La Castro cared a jot about what happened to the captain, or even to the king himself, or if, on the contrary, in the game of chess played by women like her—and perhaps by all women—kings and pawns were all the same: temporary and dispensable. And I found myself toying with the idea that María de Castro, Angélica, and other such women were like soldiers in hostile territory, who saw themselves as foragers prowling a world of men and forced to use their beauty as ammunition and the vices and passions of the enemy as their weapons. It was a war in which only the bravest and cruelest could survive and one in which, almost always, the passage of time would finally vanquish them. Seeing María de Castro in all the perfect beauty of her youth, no one would have thought that, a few years later, for reasons that have no bearing on this story, my master would visit her for the last time in the hostel for sick women opposite Atocha Hospital, and find her aged and disfigured by syphilis, covering her face with her cloak, ashamed to be seen in that state. Or that I, standing unseen by the door, would see Captain Alatriste, when the time came to say good-bye, lean toward her and, despite her resistance, draw aside the cloak and place a final kiss on her withered lips.

Just then, the innkeeper came over and whispered something to María de Castro. She nodded, stroked her husband’s hand, and stood up with a rustle of skirts.

“Good night,” she said.

“Shall I come with you?” asked Cózar distractedly.

“There’s no need. Some friends are expecting me, the queen’s ladies.”

She was looking at herself in a small mirror and touching up her rouge. At that hour, I thought, the only ladies who weren’t safe in bed were whores and the queens in a deck of cards. Don Francisco and I exchanged a meaningful glance, which Cózar caught. His face was an impassive mask.

“I’ll have them bring the coach around for you,” he said to his wife.

“There’s no need,” she said confidently. “My friends have sent theirs.”

Her husband nodded indifferently, as if he didn’t care one way or the other. He was bent over his wine and seemed entirely unmoved.

“May I know where you’ll be?”

She gave a charming smile and put away the mirror in her little silver mesh bag.

“Oh, somewhere or other. In La Fresneda, I think. But don’t sit up for me.”

With another smile and with great aplomb, she said good-bye, arranged her cloak to cover head and shoulders, gathered up her skirt, and departed, gently shaking her head at don Francisco, who had gallantly stood up in order to accompany her to the door. I noticed that her husband did not stir from his seat, but sat with doublet unfastened and mug in hand, staring into his wine with an absorbed expression on his face and a strange grimace of distaste beneath that long mustache of his. If that remarkable woman is leaving alone, I thought, while her drunkard husband stays here with don Pedro Ximénez and with that look on his face, she’s clearly not simply going off to say her prayers before bed. Don Francisco shot me a grave glance, eyebrows raised, which only confirmed me in my view. La Fresneda was a hunting lodge on the royal estate, just over half a league from El Escorial, at the far end of a long avenue of poplars. Neither the queen nor her ladies had ever been known to set foot there.

“It’s time we all went to bed,” said don Francisco.

Cózar still did not move, his eyes fixed on his mug of wine. The ironic, scoundrelly smirk had grown more marked.

“Why the rush?” he murmured.

He seemed quite different from the man whom I had previously only seen from afar; it was as if the wine were revealing shadowy corners that normally went unperceived in the glare of the stage lights. Then, abruptly raising his glass, he said:

“Let’s drink to young Philip’s health!”

I eyed him uneasily. Even famous actors had to watch what they said. In truth he was not the sparkling, witty character we had seen on stage, always with a sharp riposte on his lips and always in a buoyant mood, with that peculiarly mocking air about him, as if he were saying: “I’m enjoying myself, the worms can wait.” Don Francisco again looked at me, then poured himself some more wine and raised it to his lips. I was fidgeting in my seat, shooting him impatient glances. He, however, shrugged his shoulders, as if to say: “There’s not much we can do. Your master holds all the cards, but where is he? As for this other man, sometimes a few glasses of wine reveal things that sobriety keeps at bay.”

“How does that wonderful sonnet of yours go, Señor de Quevedo?” Cózar had placed one hand on don Francisco’s arm. “Something about a ruddy-faced silversmith pursuing the nymph Diana . . . Do you know the one I mean?”

Don Francisco observed him intently, as if trying to see what was going on behind the other man’s eyes. The light from the candles was reflected in the lenses of his spectacles.

“I can’t remember,” he said at last.

He was anxiously twirling his mustache. I concluded that he had not liked what he saw inside Cózar. Even I sensed in the actor’s tone of voice something I would never have imagined—a vague rancour, contained and dark—entirely opposed to the person Cózar was, or usually seemed to be.

“You don’t? Well, I do,” Cózar raised a finger. “Wait.”

And albeit rather hesitantly, he proceeded to recite with actorly skill, for he was a magnificent player possessed of an excellent voice:

“Grave Jupiter, or so we’re told,

Once lifted up a maiden’s skirts

And had her in a shower of gold.”

One didn’t have to be a literary expert to be able to decipher the symbols, and the poet and I exchanged another uncomfortable look. Cózar, on the other hand, seemed entirely unperturbed. He had once more raised his mug of wine to his lips and appeared to be chuckling to himself.

“And what about that other poem of yours?” he said, having taken two long gulps of wine. “Don’t you remember that one, either? Of course you do. ‘A cuckold, you are, sir, up to your brows.’ ”

Don Francisco was shifting uneasily in his seat, looking around like someone seeking an escape route.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Really? Well, you wrote it, and it’s famous. In the gossip-shops they say it may be a reference to me.”

“Ridiculous. You’ve had too much to drink.”

“Of course, but I have a superb memory for poetry. Listen:

“My Queen, what I order is just,

If not, what’s the point of being king

If one cannot make a law of lust

When one’s own lust doth sing.

“Not for nothing am I Spain’s finest actor. But wait, Señor Poet, for another particularly apt sonnet springs to mind. I refer to the one that begins: ‘The voice of the eye that we call a fart.’ ”

“That, as far as I know, is anonymous.”

“Yes, but everyone attributes it to your illustrious pen.”

Don Francisco was beginning to get really angry now, although he still kept glancing to left and right. The relieved expression on his face was saying, “At least we’re alone and the innkeeper’s nowhere to be seen.” For Cózar, with no prompting, was declaiming:

“To hell with vaunting, boastful kings

Who, puffed up by toadying courtiers,

Think life and death their own playthings.”

These lines had, in fact, been written by don Francisco, although he swore blind that they hadn’t. Written at a time when the poet was rather less popular at court, manuscript copies were still making the rounds in Spain, and he would have given his right arm to have them withdrawn. On this occasion, they proved to be the final straw. Don Francisco summoned the innkeeper, paid for the meal, and got angrily to his feet, leaving Cózar sitting there. I followed behind.

“In a couple of days, he’s going to perform before the king,” I said uneasily, once we were out in the hallway. “And in your play, too.”

Still frowning, don Francisco glanced back.

“Oh, there’s no need to worry,” he said at last in a wry, mocking tone. “It’s just a temporary lapse. Tomorrow morning, once he’s slept off the wine, everything will be as normal.”

He threw his short black cape over his shoulders and fastened it.

“By my life, though,” he added after a moment’s thought, “I never suspected that such a tame beast would have had qualms about his honor.”

I cast a last astonished glance at the small figure of the actor, whom I, like don Francisco, had always taken to be a jolly man of great good humor and few morals. All of which goes to show—and he was to surprise me still further in the hours that followed—one can never fathom the hearts of men.

“Have you ever considered that he might love her?” I asked.

I blushed as soon as these unconsidered words had left my mouth. Don Francisco, who was tucking his sword into his leather belt, paused in what he was doing and regarded me with interest. Then he smiled and slowly finished buckling on his belt and sword, as though my remark had given him food for thought, yet he said nothing. He put on his hat and we walked silently out into the street. Only after we had gone a few steps did I see him nod as if after long reflection.

“You never can tell, my lad,” he murmured, “you never can tell.”

It had grown cooler and there were no stars to be seen. As we crossed the esplanade, gusts of wind were whirling up leaves torn from the tops of the trees. When we reached the palace, where we had to give the password because it was after ten o’clock, there was still no news of the captain. According to what don Francisco told me after he had exchanged a few words with the Count of Guadalmedina, the latter wished him in hell. “I hope for Alatriste’s sake,” he had said, “that he doesn’t create problems for me with the count-duke.” As you can imagine, that thought tormented me, and I wanted to stay there at the door, in case my master should arrive. Don Francisco tried to reassure me by giving me various sensible explanations. It was seven long leagues from Madrid to El Escorial. The captain might have been delayed by some minor accident, or perhaps preferred to arrive at night for greater safety. Whatever the case, he knew how to take care of himself. In the end, more resigned than convinced, I agreed that he was right, aware that he was not entirely persuaded by his own eloquence. The truth is that we could do nothing but wait. Don Francisco went about his business, and I again walked over to the great palace gate, where I decided I would remain all night, awaiting news. I was walking between the columns of the courtyard where the kitchens were located when, by a narrow staircase, ill lit and half hidden behind the thick walls, I heard the rustle of silk, and my heart stopped as if I had been shot. Even before I heard her whisper my name, even before I turned toward the shape crouched in the shadows, I knew that it was Angélica de Alquézar, and that she was waiting for me. Thus began the happiest and most terrible night of my life.