The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet

admired by women in the street or at evening parties. My love. He suddenly found himself remembering the last lines of a sonnet by Lope that he had heard that afternoon at the poet’s house:

She loves you, loathes you, treats you well, then ill. Like a leech or surgeon’s knife, she’s double-edged: Sometimes she’ll cure, but sometimes she will kill.

In the moonlight, Maria de Castro’s eyes looked incredibly beautiful, and it accentuated the dark abyss of her half-open mouth. So what, thought the captain. My love or not my love. My love or someone else’s love. My madness or my sanity. My, your, his heart. That night he was alive, and that was all that counted. He had eyes to see and a mouth to kiss with. And teeth to bite. None of the many sons of bitches who had crossed his path, Turks, heretics, constables, or bullies, had succeeded in stealing this moment from him. He was still breathing, although many had tried to stop him doing so. And now, as if to confirm this, one of her hands was caressing his skin, lingering over each old scar. “My love,” she said again. Don Francisco de Quevedo would doubtless have got a good poem out of this, fitting it all into fourteen perfect hendecasyllables. Captain Alatriste, however, merely smiled to himself. It was good to be alive, at least for a while longer, in a world in which no one gave anything away for nothing, in which everything had to be paid for—before, during, and afterward. “I must have paid something,” he thought. “I don’t know how much or when, but I must have done so if life is rewarding me with the prize of having a woman look at me as she is looking at me now, even if only for a few nights.”

3. THE ALCAZAR DE LOS AUSTRIAS

“I am very much looking forward to your play, Senor de Quevedo.”

The queen was the extremely beautiful daughter of Henry IV of France, le Bearnois; she was twenty-three years old, pale-complexioned, and had a dimple in her chin. Her accent was as charming as her appearance, especially when, in her struggle to roll her r’s, she frowned a little, earnestly and courteously, as befitted such a refined and intelligent queen. She was clearly born to sit on a throne, and although she came from a foreign land, she reigned over Spain as a loyal Spaniard, just as her sister-in-law, Ana de Austria—sister of our Philip IV and wife of Louis XIII—reigned as a loyal Frenchwoman in her adoptive country. When the course of history brought the old Spanish lion into conflict with the young French wolf in a squabble over hegemony in Europe, both queens—brought up to fulfill the rigorous duties of honor and blood—unreservedly embraced the respective causes of their august husbands. In the harsh times that lay ahead, we Spaniards would find ourselves in the paradoxical position of coming to blows with a France ruled by a Spanish queen. Such are the vicissitudes of war and politics.

However, to return to that morning, to dona Isabel de Borbon and to the Alcazar Real, light was pouring in through the three balconies of the Room of Mirrors, gilding the queen’s curled hair and making her two simple pearl earrings gleam. She was dressed in homely fashion, within the constraints of her rank, in a mauve gown of heavy watered camlet decorated with silver braid; and sitting, as she was, on a stool by the window of the central balcony, an inch of white stocking was visible above her satin shoes.

“I hope I will not disappoint, my lady.”

“Oh, I am sure you will not. The court has complete confidence in your inventive talents.”

She was angelic, I thought, from where I stood in the doorway, not daring to move so much as an eyebrow. I had several reasons for feeling petrified, and finding myself in the presence of the queen was only one, and not, by the way, the most important. I had put on new clothes for the occasion, a black doublet with a starched collar, black breeches, and a cap, all of which a tailor in Calle Mayor, a friend of Captain Alatriste, had made for me—on account, and in just three days—as soon as we knew that don Francisco de Quevedo would be taking me with him to the palace. As a favorite of the court, and held in high esteem by the queen, don Francisco had become a regular guest at all courtly functions. He amused our king and queen with his remarks; he flattered the count-duke, who, with his ever-growing number of political opponents, found it useful to have Quevedo’s intelligent quill on his side; and he was adored by the ladies, who, at every party and every gathering, would plead with him to entertain them with his poetry or with some improvised verse. And so, astute and sharp as ever, the poet allowed himself to be loved; he exaggerated his limp so that others might forgive both his talent and his position as favorite; and he had no compunction about making the most of all this for as long as his luck lasted. There was evidently a favorable conjunction of the stars, but one that don Francisco’s stoical skepticism—gleaned from the classics and from his own experience of changing fortunes—told him would not last forever. As he himself used to say, we are what we are until we cease to be so. This was especially true in Spain, where these things change overnight. The same people who applauded you yesterday and felt honored to know you and to be your friend will, today, for no apparent reason, throw you into prison or put a penitent’s hat on your head and march you through the streets to the scaffold.

“Allow me, my lady, to introduce a young friend of mine. His name is Inigo Balboa Aguirre and he fought in Flanders.”

Cap in hand, blushing furiously, I bowed so low that my forehead almost touched the floor. My embarrassment, as I have said, was due not only to finding myself in the presence of the wife of Philip IV. I was aware, too, of four pairs of eyes staring at me—the queen’s four maids of honor. They were sitting nearby on the satin pillows and cushions arranged on the yellow-and-red tiled floor, next to Gastoncillo, the French jester whom dona Isabel de Borbon had brought with her at the time of her nuptials with our king. The glances and smiles of these young ladies were enough to turn anyone’s head.

“So young,” said the queen.

She smiled sweetly at me, then started chatting with don Francisco about the details of the ballads he had written, while I stayed where I was, cap in hand, eyes fixed on some point in the distance, and having to lean against the tiled frieze behind me in case my legs gave way. The girls were all whispering to each other, and Gastoncillo joined in. I scarcely knew where to look. The jester was, it is true, only three foot tall and as ugly as sin, and famed at court for his wicked tongue—you can imagine just how funny it would be to hear a French dwarf telling jokes—but the queen liked him and everyone laughed at his jests, even if only reluctantly and out of duty. Anyway, I stayed where I was, as still as one of the figures in the paintings that adorned the walls of the room, which had only been open since the very recent restoration work on the palace facade had been completed, for in that ancient building, dark rooms from the last century adjoined or flowed into entirely modern, newly decorated ones. I looked at Titian’s representations of Achilles and Ulysses above the doors, at his very apposite allegory Religion Succored by Spain, at the equestrian portrait of the great emperor Charles at the battle of Muhlberg, and, on the opposite wall, at another of Philip IV, also on horseback, painted by Diego Velazquez. Finally, when I knew each and every one of those canvases by heart, I summoned up sufficient courage to turn and look at the real reason for my unease. I could not say whether the pounding inside me came from the hammering of the carpenters who were preparing the nearby Salon Dorado for the queen’s evening party or from the blood pumping furiously through my veins and heart. However, there I stood, as if ready to withstand a charge from the Lutheran cavalry, and, opposite me, sitting on a red velvet cushion, was the blue-eyed angel-devil who simultaneously sweetened and soured my innocence and my youth. Needless to say, Angelica de Alquezar was watching me.

About an hour later, when the visit was over, and I was following don Francisco de Quevedo through the porticos of the Queen’s Courtyard, the jester Gastoncillo caught up with me, tugged discreetly at the sleeve of my doublet, and pressed a tightly folded piece of paper into my hand. I stood for a moment studying it, as it lay unopened in my palm; then, before don Francisco saw the note, I slipped it into my purse. I looked around, feeling bold and gallant, the bearer of a secret message, like some character out of a cloak-and-sword drama. “Dear God,” I thought, “life is beautiful and the court is a fascinating place.” The palace, where decisions were made as to the fate of an empire that bestrode two worlds, reflected the pulse of the Spain which, just then, I found so intoxicating. The two courtyards, the queen’s and the king’s, were full of courtiers, suitors, and idlers who came and went between the palace and the mentidero outside, through the archway where, in the shadows or silhouetted against the light, I could see the checkered uniforms of the old guard. Don Francisco de