The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet

had dealt him in the initial chaos was to prove deadly; as we learned afterward, three days later he was given the last rites and on the eighth day died. Having seen off one ruffian and wounded Moscatel in the arm, my master, making sure to keep his hat pulled well down and his face covered so that he would remain unrecognized by Moscatel, was now harrying the butcher with his sword, while that fool, who had long since ceased his strutting, was stumbling backward in search of the door to his house—something my master was doing his best to prevent— and calling for help to defend himself against these murderers. Moscatel finally fell to the ground, where Captain Alatriste spent some time kicking him in the ribs, until Contreras returned, having finally chased off his opponent.

“Yepes,” he said, when, at the sound of his footsteps, my master spun round, sword in hand.

Gonzalo Moscatel lay on the ground moaning, and his neighbors, woken by the clamor, were beginning to appear at their windows. At the far end of the street a light glimmered, and someone yelled something about calling out the constables.

“Can we please leave now?” grumbled don Francisco de Quevedo from behind his cloak.

The suggestion seemed a reasonable one, and so we made our exit as if we were carrying in our pocket the king’s patent. An ebullient Alonso de Contreras affectionately patted my cheek and called me “son,” and Captain Alatriste, after giving Moscatel one last kick in the ribs, followed after, sheathing his sword. Three or four streets farther on, when we made a halt in Calle de Tudescos to celebrate, Contreras was still laughing.

“Od’s my life,” he declared. “I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since the sack of Negroponte, when I had some Englishmen hanged.”

Lopito de Vega and Laura Moscatel were married four weeks later in the church of the Jeronimas, in the absence of her uncle, who was going about Madrid with fourteen stitches in his face and his arm in a sling, blaming both injuries on a certain “Yepes.” Lopito’s father was not present either. The marriage was a very discreet affair, with Captain Contreras, Quevedo, my master, and I as witnesses. The young couple moved into a modest rented house in Plaza de Anton Martin, where they intended to await Lopito’s promotion to ensign. As far as I know, they lived there happily for three months. Then, due to some infection of the air or a corruption of the water caused by the terrible heat ravaging Madrid that year, Laura Moscatel died of a malign fever, after being bled and purged by incompetent doctors; and her young widower, his heart broken, returned to Italy. And so ended the strange adventure of Calle de Madera, and I, too, learned something from that whole sad affair: Time carries everything away, and eternal happiness exists only in the imaginations of poets and on the stage.

6. THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING

Angelica de Alquezar had again asked me to meet her at the Puerta de la Priora. As she put it in her brief note: I require an escort. I would be lying if I said that I had no reservations about accepting; on the other, hand, I never for a moment considered not going. Angelica had entered my blood like a quartan fever. I had tasted her lips, touched her skin, and seen too many promises in her eyes; my judgment grew blurred whenever she was involved. Nevertheless, however in love I may have been, I was not totally bereft of all common sense, and so this time, I took proper precautions, and when the door opened and that same agile shadow joined me in the darkness, I was reasonably well prepared for what might lie ahead. I had on a thick buffcoat made by a leatherworker in Calle de Toledo out of an old one belonging to the captain, and had my sword at my left side and my dagger tucked into my belt at the back. Covering and disguising all these things, I was wearing a gray serge cloak and a black hat with no feather or band. I had also washed with soap and water, and was sporting the soft down on my upper lip which I kept shaving in the hope that this would encourage it, one day, to reach the impressive dimensions of Captain Alatriste’s mustache; this it never did, by the way, for I never had much of a mustache or a beard. Before leaving, I scrutinized myself in La Lebrijana’s mirror, and was quite pleased with what I saw, and on my way to the rendezvous, whenever I passed beneath a torch or a lantern, I would admire my own shadow. I recall this now and smile, and I’m sure that you, dear readers, will understand.

“Where are you taking me this time?” I asked.

“I want to show you something,” replied Angelica. “It will be useful for your education.”

I did not find these words in the least reassuring. I had seen something of life by then and knew that anything “useful for one’s education” was only ever acquired with damage to one’s own ribs or with the kind of bloodletting not administered by a barber. So, once again, I prepared myself for the worst, or, rather, resigned myself—sweetly and fearfully. As I have said before, I was very young at the time and in love with the devil.

“You seem to like dressing as a man,” I said.

This continued both to fascinate and shock me. As I mentioned earlier, a woman adopting male attire in order to find manly glory or to seek a solution to troubles of the heart had been a commonplace in the theater since the early Italian plays and, indeed, since Ariosto, but the truth is that, plays and legends apart, such a figure never appeared in real life, or not at least in my experience. Angelica laughed softly, as if to herself, more Marfisa than Bradamante, for I would soon learn the extent to which she was moved less by love than by war.

“Surely,” she said mischievously, “you wouldn’t want me running around Madrid in skirt and farthingale.”

She completed this thought by placing her lips so close to my ear that they touched it, making the skin all over my body prickle; then she whispered these bold lines by Lope:

“How could he ever love me, he who saw me,

Bloodstained, beat down a wall of Turks?”

And, wretch that I was, the only thing that prevented me from kissing her, whether stained in blood or not, was the fact that she suddenly turned away and set off at a brisk pace. The journey, this time, was shorter. Following the walls of the Convento de Maria de Aragon, we walked through dark and near-deserted streets to the orchards and vegetable gardens of Leganitos, where I felt the cold and damp penetrate my serge cloak. In her mannish black clothes and with her dagger at her waist, she was only lightly dressed yet she did not appear to feel the cold. She strode resolutely into the night, determined and confident. When I paused to get my bearings, she carried on, without waiting, and I had no option but to go after her, casting cautious glances to right and left. She wore a page’s cap tucked into her belt so that she could cover her hair should this prove necessary, but meanwhile, she wore it loose, and the pale smudge of her fair hair guided me through the darkness toward the abyss.

There wasn’t a light to be seen anywhere. Alone in the dark, Diego Alatriste stopped and, with professional prudence, looked around him. Not a soul in sight. Again he touched the folded piece of paper he was carrying in his purse.

You deserve an explanation and a proper good-bye.

Meet me at eleven o’clock in Camino de las

Minillas. The first house.

Maria de Castro

He had hesitated right up until the last moment. Finally, when there was only just enough time, he had downed a quart of brandy to keep out the cold. Then, having equipped himself properly as regards weapons and clothing—including, this time, his buffcoat—he set off toward Plaza Mayor and from there to Santo Domingo before following Calle de Leganitos to the outskirts of the city. This was where he was now, standing by the bridge near the walls surrounding the orchards, watching the road that lay steeped in shadow. In common with all the other houses bordering the river, no lights were lit in the first house. These houses, each with its own orchard and fields,