“Is that your blood?” he asked, concerned, arching his eyebrows behind his spectacles.
“No.”
The poet nodded gravely, looked away, and made no further comment. As he himself once said: Friendship is composed of shared rounds of wine, a few sword fights fought shoulder to shoulder, and many timely silences. I, too, was looking at my master with some concern, but he shot me a reassuring look and a faint distracted smile.
“Everything in order, Íñigo?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“How was the farce before the interlude?”
“Oh, excellent. It was called The Coachman Cometh, by Quiñones de Benavente. We laughed so much we cried.”
Then all talk stopped, for at that point the guitars ceased playing. The musketeers at the back of the yard hissed furiously and cursed impatiently, demanding silence in their usual ill-mannered way. There was a furious fluttering of fans in the ladies’ sections up above and below; women ceased signaling to men and vice versa; the sellers of limes and mead withdrew with their baskets and demijohns; and, behind the shutters on the balconies, the people of quality returned to their places. On one such balcony, I spotted the Count of Guadalmedina—who paid the vast sum of two thousand reales a year to ensure a good seat at all the new plays—along with a few gentlemen friends and some ladies. At another window sat don Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, accompanied by his family. Our king was not, alas, there, even though this fourth Philip of ours was very fond of the theater and often attended, either openly or incognito. On this occasion, however, he was still tired from his recent exhausting journey to Aragon and Catalonia, during which don Francisco de Quevedo—whose star was still in the ascendant at court—had formed part of the entourage, as he had in Andalusia. The poet could doubtless have had a seat as a guest on one of those upper balconies, but he was a man who liked to mingle with the populace, preferring the lively atmosphere in the lower sections of the Corral, and, besides, there he could enjoy the company of his good friend Diego Alatriste. For while Alatriste may have been a soldier, swordsman, and a man of few words, he was also reasonably well educated, having read good books and seen a great deal of theater; and although he never gave himself airs and mostly kept his opinions to himself, he nevertheless had a sharp eye for a good play and was never taken in by the easy effects with which some playwrights larded their work in order to win the favor of the ordinary people. This was not the case with such great writers as Lope, Tirso, or Calderón; and even when they did resort to the tricks of the trade, their inventive skill marked the difference between their noble stratagems and the ignoble impostures of lesser writers. Lope himself described this better than anyone:
Whenever the time comes to write a play
I put Aristotle under lock and key
And stow Terence and Plautus out of the way
So that I’m deaf to their shouts and pleas,
For even mute books have something to say.
This should not be taken as an apology by that Phoenix of Inventiveness for employing stratagems lacking in taste, but, rather, as an explanation of why he refused to conform to the tastes of those learned neo-Aristotelian scholars, who, as one man, censured his wildly successful plays, yet would have given their right arm to put their name to them or, better still, to take the money. The play that afternoon was not, of course, by Lope but by Tirso, although the result was similar, for the work, a so-called cloak-and-sword drama, contained much wonderful poetry and turned, inevitably, on love and intrigue, but touched also on more somber themes: for example, Madrid as a place of deception and delusion, a place of falsehood where the valiant soldier comes to be rewarded for his valor and finds only disillusion; it also criticized the Spaniards’ scorn for work and their hunger for a life of luxury beyond that appropriate to their station. For this, too, was a very Spanish tendency, one that had already dragged us into the abyss several times before and one that would persist for years to come, exacerbating the moral infirmity that destroyed the Spanish empire, that empire of two worlds—the legacy of hard, arrogant, brave men who had emerged out of eight centuries spent cutting Moorish throats, with nothing to lose and everything to gain. In the year one thousand six hundred and twenty-six—when the events I am relating took place—the sun had not yet set upon Spain, although it very soon would. Seventeen years later, as a lieutenant at Rocroi, I would hold on high our tattered flag, despite the battering from the French cannon, and would myself bear witness to the sad fading of our former glory as I stood in the midst of the last squadron formed by our poor, faithful infantry. When an enemy officer asked me how many men there had been in the old, now decimated regiment, I said simply: “Count the dead.” And it was there that I closed Captain Alatriste’s eyes for the last time.
But I will speak of these things when the moment arrives. Let us return to the Corral de la Cruz and that afternoon’s performance of a new play. The resumption of the play aroused the same state of expectancy that I described earlier. From our bench, the captain, don Francisco, and I were now gazing across at the stage, where the second act was just beginning. Petronila and Tomasa came on again, leaving to the spectators’ imagination the beauty of the garden, which was only hinted at by an ivy-clad shutter placed at one of the stage entrances. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the captain lean forward and rest his arms on the balustrade. His aquiline profile was lit by a bright ray of sunlight that found its way through a tear in the awning erected to shade the audience from the glare, for the Corral faced west and was on a hill. Both female players looked very striking in their male costumes; this was a fashion which neither pressure from the Inquisition nor royal edict had managed to expunge from the theater, for the simple reason that people liked it too much. Similarly, when some of Castile’s more Pharisaic councilors—egged on by certain fanatical clerics—tried to ban plays in Spain altogether, this was again thwarted by the ordinary people, who refused to have this pleasure taken away from them, arguing moreover, and quite rightly, too, that part of the price of every ticket went to support good works and hospitals.
However, to go back to the play, the two women disguised as men stepped out onto the stage and were warmly applauded by the audience—packing yard, tiered seats, galleries, and balconies—and when María de Castro, in her role as Petronila, spoke these lines:
Count me, Bargas, as good as dead,
My mind is gone, I am not myself . . .
the musketeers, who, as I mentioned before, were very hard to please indeed, showed clear signs of approval, standing on tiptoe in order to get a better view; and, in the upper gallery, the women stopped munching on hazelnuts, limes, and cherries. María de Castro was the most beautiful and most famous actress of her day; she embodied, as no other actress, the strange, magnificent human reality that was our theater, a theater that always hovered between, on the one hand, holding up a mirror to everyday life—at times a satirical, distorting mirror—and, on the other, presenting us with the most beautiful and thrilling of fantasies. La Castro was a spirited woman, with a lovely figure and an even lovelier face: dark, almond eyes, white teeth, pale skin, and a beautiful, well-proportioned mouth. Other women envied her beauty, her clothes, and her way of speaking the verse. Men admired her as an actress and lusted after her as a woman, and this latter fact met with no opposition from her husband, Rafael de Cózar, who was equally celebrated as an actor and as one of the glories of the Spanish stage. I will have more to tell of him later, but for now I will just say this: Cózar specialized in playing fathers, witty knaves, saucy servants, and rustic mayors, roles which—to the delight of adoring audiences—he performed with great style and swagger. Theatrical talents aside, however, Cózar had no qualms about allowing discreet access to the charms of the four or five women in his company, on receipt, naturally, of an agreed fee. The women were, of course, all married, or at least passed as such in order to meet the requirements of edicts that had been in effect since the days of the great Philip II. As Cózar said, with pl
easing effrontery, it would be both selfish and lacking in charity—that theological virtue—not to share great art with those who can afford to pay for it. His own wife, María de Castro (years later it was learned that their marriage was, in fact, a sham), proved to be a mine more profitable even than those of Peru, although he always held in reserve—as the most exquisite of delicacies—that Aragonese beauty with chestnut hair and the sweetest of voices. In short, the clear-headed Cózar fitted, as few men else, this dictum by Lope:
The honor of the married man is a castle
In which the enemy is the castle’s keeper.
Let us, though, be as fair as the present story demands. The truth is that La Castro did sometimes have less venal ideas and tastes, and it was not always jewelry that made her lovely eyes shine. Men, as the saying goes, are there to be kissed, cozened, or cuckolded. As far as kissing goes, I will just say, dear reader, that María de Castro and Diego Alatriste were rather more than just friends—the captain’s ill humor and the quarrel with Caridad la Lebrijana were not unrelated to this fact—and that afternoon at the Corral de la Cruz, during the second act, the captain kept his eyes fixed on the actress, while I kept looking from him to her. I felt concerned for my master and sad for La Lebrijana, of whom I was very fond. Then again, I was also thrilled to the core to be there, reliving the impression La Castro had made on me three or four years earlier, on my first visit to the theater to see El Arenal de Sevilla, in the Corral del Príncipe, on that memorable day when everyone, including Charles, Prince of Wales and the then Duke of Buckingham, was embroiled in a fight in the presence of Philip IV himself. I may not have thought the lovely actress the most beautiful creature on earth—that title belonged to another woman known to you, dear reader, a woman with devilish blue eyes—but I was as stirred by her looks as every other man present. I could not have imagined then how María de Castro would complicate my master’s life, and mine, placing both of us in the gravest of dangers, us and the king, whose life, during that period, was quite literally on a knife-edge. All of this I propose to recount in this new adventure and thus prove that whenever a beautiful woman is involved, there is no madness into which a man will not fall, no abyss into which he will not peer, and no situation of which the devil will not take full advantage.
Between the second and third acts, the musketeers called for and were given a jácara entitled Doña Isabel the Thief. This was a famous ballad written in thieves’ slang and was, on this occasion, sung with great gusto by a mature, but still attractive, actress called Jacinta Rueda. I, however, could not give it my full attention, because the moment she started singing, a stagehand came up the steps, bearing a message for Señor Diego Alatriste, saying that he was expected in the dressing rooms. The captain and don Francisco de Quevedo exchanged looks, and when my master got to his feet, the poet shook his head disapprovingly and said:
Happy the man who dies on leaving ’em
Or succeeds in living without their love,
Or, better yet, gets to dig their grave.
The captain shrugged, picked up hat and cape, muttered a brusque “Stay out of my business, don Francisco,” donned his hat, and pushed his way past the other spectators on the bench. Quevedo gave me an eloquent look which I took to mean what it usually did, and so I left my seat to follow my master. “Let me know if there’s any trouble,” his eyes had said from behind his spectacles, “two swords are better than one.” Conscious of my responsibilities, I checked that the dagger I wore at my belt was in place and, discreet as a mouse, went after the captain, hoping that this time we might be able to watch the end of the play in peace. It would, after all, have been both a shame and an insult to spoil this first performance of Tirso’s play.
Diego Alatriste had been here before and knew the way. He walked down the steps from the benches, turned left opposite the passageway that housed the stall selling mead, and followed the corridor that led underneath the boxes to the stage and the actors’ dressing rooms. At the far end, his old comrade from Flanders, the lieutenant of constables, Martín Saldaña, was standing on the steps, chatting with the owner of the Corral and a couple of acquaintances, who were also theater people. Alatriste stopped for a moment to greet them and immediately noticed the worried look on Saldaña’s face. He was just taking his leave when Saldaña called him back and, casually, as if suddenly recollecting some minor matter, placed his hand on his arm and whispered gravely:
“Gonzalo Moscatel is in there.”
“So?”
“Best let sleeping dogs lie.”
Alatriste’s expression remained entirely inscrutable, then he said:
“You can keep your nose out of my business too.”
And he stalked off, leaving his friend scratching his beard and doubtless wondering who else had poked his nose in where it wasn’t wanted. A little farther on, Alatriste drew aside a curtain and found himself in a windowless chamber used as a storeroom for the wood and the painted back-cloths needed for the stage machinery and any scene changes. On the other side were various curtained cubicles that served as the actresses’ dressing rooms, the men’s being on the floor below. The room itself, which, beyond yet another curtain, gave onto the stage, was used by members of the company waiting to go on, but also served as an area to receive admirers. At that moment, it was occupied by half a dozen men, amongst them actors costumed and ready to take the stage as soon as the ballad was over—Jacinta Rueda could be heard on the other side of the curtain, singing the famous line “Pursued by the law, by bailiffs beset”—as well as a few gentlemen who, by virtue of their social status or their wealth, had been given permission to meet the actresses. One of these men was don Gonzalo Moscatel.
I followed the captain into the room and politely greeted Martín Saldaña as soon as I felt his eyes fix on me. The face of one of his companions on the landing seemed familiar, but I could not place it. In the corridor, where I stood, leaning against the wall, I saw my master and the gentlemen waiting inside exchange curt nods, but none of them doffed their hats. The only man not to respond to his greeting at all was don Gonzalo Moscatel, a picturesque character to whom I should perhaps introduce you. Señor Moscatel looked as if he had stepped straight out of a cloak-and-sword drama: he was big and burly, sported a ferocious mustache with extraordinarily long, upright tips, and was dressed with a mixture of elegance and bravado that managed to be simultaneously comic and alarming. He was got up like a fop, with a lace Walloon collar over his purple doublet, old-fashioned baggy breeches, a short French cape, silk stockings, black felt boots, and a leather belt studded with old silver reales and from which hung an extremely long sword; for he also fancied himself a bit of a ruffian, the kind who struts about uttering oaths—“Od’s blood,” “A pox on’t”—twirling his mustaches and clanking his sword. He claimed, furthermore, to be a poet, and made a great show of his friendship with Góngora, for which there was not the slightest basis in fact; he also perpetrated some infamous, verbose poems which, being a man of ample means, he was able to have printed at his own expense. Only one loathsome, fawning fellow poetaster had bothered to pay him court and extol the virtues of his verse. This same wretch, one Garciposadas, who penned stiff, dictionary-bound poetry—a pyre he builds her and constructs for her a wall, you know the kind of thing—wrote with a quill from the wing of the angel who visited Sodom and prospered by licking boots at court. He was, alas, burned in one of the very last autos-da-fé, condemned as a softling, that is, as one who had committed the nefarious sin. Don Gonzalo Moscatel had thus been left with no one to praise his muse to the skies until the softling’s place was taken by a slimy, pettifogging lawyer named Saturnino Apolo, an inveterate flatterer and emptier of other people’s purses, who shamelessly wheedled money out of Moscatel, and to whom we will also return later on. Otherwise, Moscatel had reached his position in society thanks to his role as chief supplier of meat, pork included, to the city’s butchers, and thanks also—a few personal bribes aside—to the dowry of his late
wife, whose father had been a judge of the kind whose justice was not so much blind as one-eyed, and who preferred the scales of justice to be weighted down with a few doubloons. The widower Moscatel had no children of his own, only a young orphaned niece over whom he stood guard in his house in Calle de la Madera like Cerberus, the hound of Hades. He was also keen to become a member of some military order and was sure, sooner or later, to end up with a red cross emblazoned on his doublet. In this Spain full of crooked, rapacious functionaries, you could get anything you liked, so long as you had stolen enough money to pay for it.
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 Cózar—a man of great wit and theatrical skill, and an Andalusian to boot—and that his wife was the celebrated actress María 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: