She laughed again, her hands folded almost modestly over the ample skirt and the mother-of-pearl fan that hung from her waist. I regarded the neat outline of her mouth. To hell with everything, I thought. Fresh bread, roses, and honey—and bare skin underneath. Had I not been where I was, I would have hurled myself upon those lips.
“You surely don’t think,” she said, “that you can have me for free.”
Before matters became dangerously complicated, there was time for an agreeable interlude, one that would have played well on the stage. The plot was hatched during a meal at El Leon, offered by Captain Alonso de Contreras, who was his usual talkative, congenial, and slightly boastful self. He presided over the occasion, leaning back against a barrel of wine on which we had deposited our capes, hats, and swords. The other guests were don Francisco de Quevedo, Lopito de Vega, my master, and myself, and we were all happily dispatching some good garlic soup and a thick beef and bacon stew. Our host Contreras was celebrating having finally been paid a sum of money that had, he claimed, been owed to him since the battle of Roncesvalles. We ended up discussing Moscatel’s steadfast opposition to Lopito and Laura’s love, a situation only made worse by the butcher’s discovery that Lopito and Diego Alatriste were now friends. The young man told us forlornly that he could only see his lady in secret— when she went out with her duenna to make some purchase, or else at mass in the church of Our Lady of the Miracles, where he, kneeling on his cloak, would observe her from afar. Sometimes, he even managed to approach and exchange a few tender words while he held, cupped in his hand—O supreme happiness—the holy water with which she made the sign of the cross. Given that Moscatel was determined to marry his niece to that vile pettifogger Saturnino Apolo, the poor girl had only two options: marriage to him or the nunnery, and so Lopito had about as much chance of marrying her as he would of finding a bride in the seraglio in Constantinople. Twenty men on horseback wouldn’t change her uncle’s mind. Besides, these were turbulent times, and what with the to-ings and fro-ings of both Turks and heretics, Lopito could, at any moment, be called on to resume his duties to the king, and that would mean losing Laura forever. This, as he admitted to us, had often led him to curse the similarly tangled situations described in his own father’s plays, because they were of no help whatsoever in resolving his problems.
This remark gave Captain Contreras a bold idea.
“It’s perfectly simple,” he said, crossing his legs. “Kidnap her and marry her—in good soldierly fashion.”
“That wouldn’t be easy,” replied Lopito glumly. “Moscatel is still paying several ruffians to guard the house.”
“How many?”
“The last time I tried to see her, there were four.”
“Good swordsmen?”
“On that occasion, I didn’t stay long enough to find out.”
Contreras smugly twirled his mustache and looked around, letting his eyes linger in particular on Captain Alatriste and don Francisco.
“The greater the number of Moors to fight, the greater the glory, don’t you agree, Senor de Quevedo?”
Don Francisco adjusted his spectacles and frowned, for it ill became a court favorite to get involved in a scandal involving kidnappings and sword fights. However, the presence of Alonso de Contreras, Diego Alatriste, and Lope’s son made it very hard for him to refuse.
“I’m afraid,” he said in resigned tones, “there’s nothing for it but to fight.”
“It might provide you with matter for a sonnet,” remarked Contreras, already imagining himself the hero of another poem.
“Or, indeed, a reason to spend a further period in exile.”
As for Captain Alatriste, who was leaning on the table before his mug of wine, the look he exchanged with his old comrade Contreras was an eloquent one. For men like them, such adventures were merely part of the job.
“And what about the boy?” asked Contreras, meaning me.
I felt almost offended. I considered myself a young man of considerable experience and so I smoothed my nonex istent mustache, as I had seen my master do, and said:
“The ‘boy’ will fight too.”
The way in which I said this brought me an approving smile from the
“When my father finds out,” moaned Lopito, “he’ll kill me.”
Captain Contreras roared with laughter.
“Your illustrious father knows a thing or two about kidnappings and elopements. The Phoenix was always a great one for the ladies!”
There followed an embarrassed silence, and we all stuck nose and mustache in our respective mugs of wine. Even Contreras did so, suddenly remembering that Lopito himself was the illegitimate child born of just such an affair, even though, as I mentioned before, Lope had subsequently acknowledged him. The young man, however, did not appear offended. He knew his father’s reputation better than anyone. After a few sips of wine and a diplomatic clearing of the throat, Contreras took up the thread again:
“There’s nothing like a fait accompli; besides, that’s what we military men are like, isn’t it? Direct, bold, proud, straight to the point. I remember once, in Cyprus it was . . .”
And he immediately launched into another story. When he had done, he took a long draft of wine, sighed nostal gically, and looked at Lopito.
“So, young man, are you truly willing to join yourself in holy matrimony to that woman, until death do you part, et cetera?”
Lopito held his gaze unblinking.
“As long as God is God, and beyond death itself.”
“No one’s asking that much of you. If you stick with her until death, you’ll be doing more than your duty already. Do we gentlemen here have your word as a gentleman?”
“On my life, you do.”
“Then there’s nothing more to be said.” Contreras gave the table a satisfied thump. “Can anyone resolve matters on the ecclesiastical side?”
“My Aunt Antonia is abbess of the Convento de las Jeronimas,” Lopito said. “She’ll gladly take us in. And Father Francisco, her chaplain, is also Laura’s confessor and knows Senor Moscatel well.”
“Will he agree to help if he’s needed?
“Oh, yes.”
“And what about the young lady? Will your Laura be prepared to be put to the test like this?”
Lopito said quite simply that she would, and there was no further discussion of the matter. Everyone agreed to take part, we all drank to a happy conclusion, and don Francisco de Quevedo, as was his wont, contributed a few appropriate lines of verse, not his this time, but Lope’s:
Everyone drank to this as well, and eight or ten toasts later, using the table as a map and the mugs of wine as the main protagonists, Captain Contreras—his speech now slightly uncertain, but his resolution firm—invited us to pull up our chairs so that he could lay out his plan to us. His assault tactics, as he termed them, were as detailed as if we were preparing to send a hundred lancers into Oran rather than plotting a small-scale attack on a private house in Calle de la Madera.
