The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet

only the waxed cape and put it on.

He heard a noise to one side, among the bushes, and unsheathed his sword. The weight of it in his hand was soothing and familiar. “You won’t find it so easy to kill me now,” he said to himself.

I froze. Captain Alatriste was standing before me, with sword in hand, a corpse at his feet, and mud caking his face like a mask. He looked as if he had just emerged from a Flemish marsh, or like a ghost returned from the beyond. He cut short my exclamations of delight and stared at Rafael de Cozar, who had just appeared behind me, splashing through puddles and stepping on branches that snapped as loudly as pistol-shots.

“Good God,” he said, sheathing his sword. “What’s he doing here?”

I explained as briefly as I could, but before I had even finished, the captain had turned and set off, as if he had suddenly lost all interest in my answer.

“Have you given the alarm?” he asked.

“I think so,” I replied, remembering uneasily the coachman’s drunken, bloated face.

“You think so?”

He was striding away into the bushes, and I was following. Behind me I could hear Cozar muttering unintelligibly; sometimes he seemed to be reciting poetry and at others mumbling curses. “Have at ’em,” he would say now and then. “Snip ’em off like a bunch of grapes. Have at ’em! Give them no quarter! Forward for Santiago and Spain!” When we occasionally stopped for the captain to get his bearings, my master would look around, shooting the actor an ill-humored glance before continuing on his way.

From somewhere nearby came the sound of a hunting horn—I thought I had heard it in the distance before we found the captain—and we stood quite still in the rain. The captain raised one finger to his lips, looking first at Cozar and then at me. Then he held out one hand to me, palm down—the silent gesture we used in Flanders to indicate that we should wait while someone else went forward as a scout—and he moved cautiously off into the bushes. I positioned myself very close to the trunk of a tree and made Cozar join me; we stayed there, waiting. Clearly surprised by all these gestures and by the almost military understanding that existed between my master and myself, the actor was about to say something, but I covered his mouth. He nodded sagely, regarding me with a new respect, and I was sure that he would never call me “boy” again. I smiled at him, and he returned my smile. His eyes were bright with excitement. I studied this small, grubby man, dripping water, with his extravagant mustache and his hand ready on his sword. He looked alarmingly fierce, like one of those short, apparently peace- loving men who might suddenly jump up and bite your ear off. Maybe it was just the wine, but Cozar seemed to feel no fear at all. This, I realized, was his finest role. The adventure of a lifetime.

At last the captain returned, as silently as he had left. He looked at me and raised his hand, this time with the palm turned toward me and with his five fingers extended. Five men, I translated mentally. He turned his thumb down: enemies. He then made another gesture, moving his hand from his shoulder to his opposite hip, as if describing a sash, and immediately raised his forefinger. An official, I translated. One. Thumb turned up. A friend. Then I understood who he meant. The red sash was a sign of rank in the army. In that wood, there could be only one high-ranking official.

From the safety of a tree trunk, Diego Alatriste again peered out into the clearing. Twenty paces away, at the foot of a huge oak, was a rock surrounded by a thicket of broom, and next to it stood a young man carrying a gun. He was tall and fair and was wearing a tabard, green breeches, and a peaked hat. His high gaiters were spattered with mud, and he wore no sword at his belt, only a folded pair of gloves and a hunting knife. He was standing very erect and still, with his back to the rock, his head high and one foot slightly in front of the other, as if hoping that such a pose would keep at bay the five men forming a tight semicircle around him.

Alatriste could not hear what the men were saying, only the occasional isolated word, their voices drowned out by the sound of the rain. The man dressed as a huntsman said nothing, and it was Gualterio Malatesta, his black cloak and hat wet and shiny, who did most of the talking. He was the only one who had not yet unsheathed his sword; the others, two of whom were dressed as royal beaters, were standing, swords in hand, on either side of him.

Alatriste removed his cape. Then, ignoring the pistol he had at his waist because he could not be sure that it would fire in all that rain, he rested one hand on his sword and the other on his knife, while he studied the terrain with an expert eye, calculating the distance and how long it would take to cross it. The fair-haired man, he thought grimly, did not look as if he would be much help. He stood there, motionless and aloof, his gun in his hand, regarding the murderers surrounding him as indifferently as if the whole affair had nothing whatever to do with him. Alatriste noticed that, like any wise hunter, the young man kept one tail of his tabard over the hammer of his gun to protect it from the rain. Were it not for the rain, the mud, and the five threatening men, he might have been posing for a court portrait by Diego Velazquez. A smile appeared on the captain’s face, half admiring, half scornful. Was it courage, he wondered, or was it, above all, stupidity and an absurd example of the Burgundian sangfroid that Charles V had introduced into the Hapsburg court a century before? At least he had one bitter consolation: the king for whom he was risking his life would not lose his composure even when under threat of death. And that was good. Although perhaps that palace peacock simply could not comprehend what was happening, or was about to happen.

More to the point, thought Alatriste, what was he doing involved in all this? Why was he risking his life for a man who could not even be bothered to lift a finger in his own defense, as if he were expecting the angels to descend from the heavens, or for his own archers to emerge from the undergrowth, invoking God and Spain? A palace upbringing created bad habits. Absurdly, the only “palace guards” here were himself, Inigo, and Cozar—with the shade of Maria de Castro hanging in the rain. There was always some idiot willing to get himself killed. The memory of what had happened in Camino de las Minillas made him tremble with rage. By Christ and his father, it would serve that fair-haired fool right—accustomed as he was to risk-free adventures with the wives of other men—if just this once he saw the boar’s tusks close-up. There was no Guadalmedina to get him out of trouble. Damn it, let him pay the price that all men pay sooner or later; and with Gualterio Malatesta on hand, he would have to pay it in cash.

“Hand over the gun, Your Majesty.”

Alatriste heard the Italian’s words quite clearly from his position behind the tree, where he was watching the scene with a kind of morbid curiosity. The king had little opportunity to defend himself: the hunting knife did not count, and he had no sword; at best, he might manage one shot with his gun, assuming it was loaded and the powder dry.

“Hand it over,” said one of the ruffians impatiently, walking up to the king, sword at the ready.

Philip IV did something very strange then. His face remained utterly impassive, but he inclined his head a little to look at his gun, as if, up until then, he had quite forgotten about it. He did this with the indifference of a man observing an object of no importance to him. After that brief moment of immobility, he cocked the hammer and raised the gun to eye level. Then, coolly taking aim at the ruffian, he felled him with a shot to the head.

That explosion was like a signal. I was with Cozar on the opposite side of the clearing, in accordance with the captain’s latest instructions to position ourselves so that we could attack Malatesta and his men from there. When I saw my master leave his hiding place and run toward them, sword in one hand and knife in the other, I immediately unsheathed my sword and went ahead too, not bothering to see whether Cozar would follow me.

“God save the king!” I heard Cozar bawl out behind me. “Stop at once, I order you.”

Holy Mother of God, I thought, that’s all we need. When the Italian and the ruffians heard these shouts and the sound of our footsteps splashing through the mud and puddles, they spun round, surprised. That is my last clear