Out of the corner of his eye, Captain Alatriste could see that Gonzalo Moscatel was giving him a fierce look and that his hand was resting in readiness on the hilt of his sword. Alas, they knew each other all too well, and each time their paths crossed, the butcher’s rancorous gaze spoke volumes about the nature of their relationship. This dated from an incident two months earlier, one night in the small hours, when the captain, swathed up to his eyes in his cloak, was walking along the dim, moonlit streets to the Inn of the Turk. The sound of an argument was coming from Calle de las Huertas. He heard a woman’s voice and, as he drew nearer, saw two figures framed in a doorway. He did not care to get involved in lovers’ quarrels or to interfere in other people’s affairs; however, his path led him precisely in that direction, and he found no reason to take another. He eventually came across a man and woman standing outside the door of a house. Although they appeared to know each other, the lady, or whatever she was, seemed angry, and the man kept insisting that she let him in, at least so far as the hallway. She had a very fine voice, the voice of a beautiful woman, or at least of a young one. And, out of curiosity, the captain stopped for a moment to see what was going on. When the other man noticed him, he turned and said: “Be on your way, this is none of your business,” a command Alatriste took to be reasonable enough; and he was just about to do as asked, when the woman, in a serene and worldly tone, said to the other man: “Unless, of course, this gentleman can persuade you to leave me alone and take you with him.” Her remark placed the matter on a more uncertain footing, and so, after a moment’s thought, Alatriste asked the lady if this was her house. It was, she said; she was a married woman and the gentleman bothering her had no evil intentions but was an acquaintance of both her and her husband. He had escorted her home after an evening at the home of some friends, and it was now high time, as she put it, for every owl to return to his olive tree. The captain was pondering the mystery of why her husband was not there at the door to resolve the matter, when the other man interrupted his thoughts with a few surly oaths, insisting that he clear off at once. In the darkness, the captain heard the sound of a span of steel being removed from its scabbard. The die was cast, and the cold night looked set to grow warmer. The captain stepped to one side in order to place himself in the shadow and the other man in the light from the moon that was slowly creeping up over the rooftops; he unfastened his cloak, wrapped it around his left arm, and unsheathed his sword. The other man did likewise, and both made a few rather halfhearted thrusts, always keeping a safe distance, with Alatriste saying nothing and his opponent cursing nineteen to the dozen. Eventually, the racket they were making brought a servant bearing a candle running out of the house, followed by the lady’s husband. The latter—in nightshirt, slippers, and tasseled nightcap—was wielding a stubby sword in his right hand and saying, “What’s going on here? Who dares cast a slur on my house and my honor?” and other similar remarks, spoken in what Alatriste suspected to be a distinctly mocking tone. The husband, it turned out, was a very pleasant, courteous man, short in stature and with a thick, German-style mustache that met with his side-whiskers. With appearances and husbandly honor duly saved, peace was restored in the nicest possible way. The night owl’s name was don Gonzalo Moscatel, and the husband—once he had handed his own sword over to his servant for safekeeping—spoke of him as a friend of the family, adding, in conciliatory fashion, that he was sure it had all been a most unfortunate misunderstanding. This was all starting to look like a scene from a play, and Alatriste nearly laughed out loud when he learned that the gentleman in the tasseled nightcap was none other than the famous actor Rafael de Cozar—a man of great wit and theatrical skill, and an Andalusian to boot—and that his wife was the celebrated actress Maria de Castro. He had seen them both on stage, but that night, by the light of the large candle held on high by the servant, was the first time he had seen La Castro at such close quarters. With her cloak barely covering her lovely figure, she looked extraordinarily beautiful and clearly found the whole situation most amusing. She had doubtless experienced other such occasions, for actresses were not, as a rule, women of cast-iron virtue; indeed, it was rumored that her husband, once he had huffed and puffed and brandished his famous sword—which was known throughout Spain— was usually very tolerant of such admirers, whether it was his wife they were interested in or one of the other women in his company, especially if, as was the case with that supplier of meat to Madrid, the admirer had the where-withal. His evident genius as actor aside, it was accepted as a universal truth that no man’s purse was safe with him. This perhaps explained the length of time it had taken him to come downstairs to defend his honor. As people used to say:
The captain, fairly embarrassed by the whole affair, was about to make his excuses and continue on his way, when the wife very sweetly thanked him for his intervention, although it was impossible to know whether she did so in order to provoke her pursuer or simply because she enjoyed that subtle and dangerous game in which women so often engage. Then she looked him up and down and invited him to visit her at the Corral de la Cruz, where they were giving the final performances of a play by Rojas Zorrilla. She was smiling broadly as she said this, showing off the perfect oval of her face and her equally perfect white teeth, which Luis de Gongora—don Francisco de Quevedo’s mortal enemy—would doubtless have compared to mother-of-pearl or tiny seed pearls. Alatriste, an old hand in these and other such situations, saw in that look some kind of promise.
And two months later, there he was in the dressing rooms of the Corral de la Cruz, having enjoyed the fruits of that promise several times—Cozar’s sword not having reappeared—and more than ready to continue doing so. Meanwhile, don Gonzalo Moscatel, whom he had met on subsequent occasions with no further consequences, continued to shoot him fierce, jealous looks. Maria de Castro was not a woman to keep just one iron in the fire, and she continued worming money out of Moscatel, flirting shamelessly with him, but never allowing things to go any further than that—every meeting at the Gate of Guadala jara cost the butcher a fortune in jewels and fine cloths— and she used Alatriste, whom the other man knew all too well by reputation, to keep him at bay. Thus, ever hopeful, and ever starved, the butcher obstinately persisted, refusing to give up his chance of bliss. He was encouraged in this, too, by La Castro’s husband, who, as well as being a great actor was also an out-and-out scoundrel, and, as he had with other such admirers, continued to use vague promises to squeeze Moscatel’s purse dry. Alatriste knew, of course, that—Moscatel apart—he was not the only man to enjoy the actress’s favors. Other men visited her, and it was said that even the Count of Guadalmedina and the Duke of Sessa had exchanged more than words with her; as don Francisco de Quevedo put it, she was a woman who charged a thousand ducats a stumble. The captain could not compete with either man in rank or money; he was simply a veteran soldier who earned a living as a paid swordsman. Yet, for some reason that escaped him—women’s souls had always seemed to him unfathomable—Maria de Castro granted him gratis what she denied outright to others or for which she charged her weight in gold:
Diego Alatriste drew aside the curtain. He was not in love with that woman, nor with any other, but Maria de Castro was the most beautiful actress of her day, and he enjoyed the rare privilege of occasionally having her all to himself. No one was going to offer him a kiss like the one she was now placing on his lips, when, later, a span of steel, a bullet, disease, or time itself would set him sleeping forever in his grave.
2. THE HOUSE IN CALLE FRANCOS
The following morning, we, or, rather, Captain Alatriste, came under a hail of harquebus fire from Caridad la Lebrijana, upstairs in the Inn of the Turk, while we, downstairs, heard only their voices. Or, rather, her voice, because she was the one who spent the most powder. The matter under discussion was, naturally enough, my master’s fondness for the theater, and the name of Maria de Castro was uttered several times, attached on each occasion to a different epithet—“strumpet,” “trollop,” and “trull” being some of the milder ones—which was quite
