“Something to remember me by, boy.”
I went over to him, determined now to run him through, and he saw this in my eyes. Then he threw his sword into the bushes and leaned back a little, resting on his elbows.
“I’m having a very bad day today,” he said.
I approached cautiously, and with the point of my sword checked his clothes, looking for concealed weapons. Then I placed the point on his chest, just above his heart. His wet hair, the rain dripping down his face, and the dark rings under his eyes made him look suddenly very weary and much older.
“Don’t do it,” he murmured softly. “Best leave it to him.”
He was looking at the bushes behind me. I heard footsteps splashing through the mud, and Captain Alatriste appeared at my side, breathing hard. Fast as a bullet and without a word, he hurled himself on the Italian. He grabbed him by the hair, set aside his sword, took out his huge hunting knife, and held it to Malatesta’s throat.
A rapid thought went through my mind—or, rather, I saw the captain and me in the woods, and remembered the count-duke’s stern countenance, the Count of Guadalmedina’s hostility toward us, and the august personage we had left behind us with only Rafael de Cózar as escort. Without Malatesta as witness, there would be a lot of explaining to do, and we might not have answers to all the questions. This realization filled me with sudden panic. I grabbed my master’s arm.
“He’s my prisoner, Captain.”
He appeared not to hear me. His stubborn face was hard, resolute, deadly. His eyes, which appeared gray in the rain, seemed to be made of the same steel as the knife he was holding. I saw the muscles, veins, and tendons in his hand tense, ready to plunge the knife in.
“Captain!”
I almost flung myself on top of Malatesta. My master pushed me roughly away, his free hand raised to strike me. His eyes pierced me as if I were the one he was about to stab. Again I cried out:
“He surrendered to me! He’s my prisoner!”
It was like a nightmare: the wet and the dirt, the soaking rain, the mud, the struggle, the captain’s agitated breathing, Malatesta’s breath only inches from my face. The captain again made as if to lunge forward, and only by dint of brute strength did I stop the knife following its inevitable path.
“Someone,” I said, “will have to explain to the powers that be exactly what happened.”
My master still did not take his eyes off Malatesta, who had his head thrown right back as he awaited the final blow, teeth gritted.
“I don’t want you and me to be tortured like pigs,” I said.
This was true. The mere idea terrified me. Finally, I felt the captain untense, although his hand still gripped the knife. It was as if the meaning of my words were gradually seeping into him. Malatesta had already understood. “Damn it, boy,” he exclaimed. “Let him kill me!”
EPILOGUE
Álvaro de la Marca, Count of Guadalmedina, held out a mug of wine to Captain Alatriste.
“You must have a devil of a thirst on you,” he said.
The captain took the mug from him. We were sheltering on the porch steps of the hunting lodge, surrounded by royal guards armed to the teeth. The rain was beating down on the blankets covering the bodies of the four ruffians who had died in the forest. The fifth, after his battering by Rafael de Cózar, had sustained a gash to the head and a couple of minor stab wounds and been carried away, more dead than alive, on an improvised litter. Gualterio Malatesta received special treatment. The captain and I watched as he departed, in shackles, on a miserable mule, guarded on all sides. He rode past, dirty and defeated, and looked at us with inexpressive eyes as if he had never seen us before in his life. I remembered his last words to us in the woods, the captain’s knife pressed to his throat. And he was right. When I imagined what awaited him—the interrogation and the torture to make him reveal all that he knew about the conspiracy—he would, I thought, have been better off dead.
“I believe,” added Guadalmedina, lowering his voice a little, “that I owe you an apology.”
He had just emerged from the hunting lodge after a long conversation with the king. My master took a sip of wine and did not respond. He seemed very tired, his hair disheveled, his face muddy and worn, his clothes torn and sodden after the fighting. He turned his cold, green eyes first on me and then on Cózar, who was sitting a little farther off, on a bench on the porch; he had a blanket draped over his shoulders and was smiling beatifically. His face was crisscrossed with scratches, he had a gash on his forehead, and a large black eye. He, too, had been given wine to drink, which he dispatched with alacrity; indeed, he already had three mugfuls under his belt. He was clearly very happy, bursting with pride and wine in his ripped doublet. He occasionally hiccupped, cried “Long live the king!,” roared like a lion, or else misquoted to himself fragments from Lope’s Peribañez and the Comendador of Ocaña:
“I am the vassal, she is his mistress,
I defend him with sword and knife,
Prepared he may be to besmirch my honor,
But I am here and will save his dear life.”
The archers of the royal guard gazed at him in disbelief, unable to tell whether he was drunk or raving mad.
The captain passed me the mug, and I took a long drink from it before handing it back. The wine warmed me a little and stopped me shivering. I glanced at Guadalmedina, who was standing next to us, cool and elegant, hand nonchalantly on hip. He had arrived just in time to receive his laurels, having read my note when he got out of bed and galloped straight there with twenty archers in tow, only to find that everything had been resolved: the king, unharmed, sitting on a rock underneath a greak oak in a clearing in the forest; Malatesta, lying facedown in the mud with his hands tied behind his back; and us, trying to revive Cózar after he had passed out while grappling with his enemy, who lay pinned beneath him, even more battered and bruised than he was. The archers, however, with no clear idea of what had happened, immediately seized us and held their swords to our throats, and it was only when they were close to killing us—during which time Guadalmedina said not a word in our favor—that the king himself explained. These three gentlemen—those were the king’s exact words—had, very bravely and at great risk to themselves, saved his life. With such a royal commendation, no one troubled us any further, and even Guadalmedina changed his tune. So there we were, encircled by guards and with a mug of wine between us, while His Catholic Majesty was attended to within, and things—whether for better or worse, I cannot say—returned to normal.
Álvaro de la Marca, with a click of his fingers, ordered another mug of wine to be brought, and when the servant placed it in his hands, he raised it in a toast to the captain.
“Here’s to your exploits today, Alatriste,” he said, smiling. “To the king and to you.”
He drank and then held out his gloved hand to shake my master’s hand, either that or to help him to his feet in the hope that he would join him in the toast. The captain, however, remained sitting where he was, not moving, his own mug in his lap, ignoring the proffered hand. He was watching the rain falling on the corpses that lay in a row in the mud.
“Perhaps . . .” Guadalmedina began, then fell silent, and I saw his smile fade on his lips. He glanced at me, and I looked away. He stood for a while, observing us, then, very slowly, he put his mug down on the ground and walked off.
I still said nothing, but sat next to my master, listening to the sound of the rain on the slate roof.
“Captain,” I said at last.
That was all. I knew it was enough. I felt his rough hand on my shoulder, felt him pat me gently on the back of the neck.
“We’re still alive,” he said at last.
I shivered from the cold, and from my own thoughts. I wasn’t thinking only about what had taken place that morning in the woods.
“What will happen to her now?” I asked quietly.
He didn’t look at me.
“Her?”
“To Angé
lica.”
He said nothing for a while. He was gazing pensively at the path along which Gualterio Malatesta had been carried off on his way to meet his torturer. Then he shook his head and said:
“One can’t always win.”
There came the sound of voices and martial footsteps, the clatter of weapons. The archers, their cuirasses beaded with rain, were mounting their horses as a coach drawn by four grays approached the door. Guadalmedina reappeared, donning an elegant jeweled hat and accompanied by various gentlemen of the royal household. He shot us a perfunctory look and issued orders. More commands were given, horses neighed, and the archers, looking very gallant on their mounts, formed into disciplined ranks. Then the king came out of the lodge. He had exchanged his huntsman’s outfit for a costume of blue brocade and was wearing boots, hat, and carrying a sword. Everyone removed his hat, apart from Guadalmedina, who, as a grandee of Spain, was entitled to keep his on. The king gazed impassively into the distance, looking as remote and aloof as he had during the skirmish in the forest. Head erect, he walked along the porch toward the carriages, passed us without even a glance, and got into the coach that was waiting by the steps. Guadalmedina was about to step in behind him when the king said something in a low voice. We saw Guadalmedina lean toward the king to hear what he was saying, despite the drenching rain. Then he frowned and nodded.
“Alatriste,” he called.
I turned to the captain, who was staring in some confusion at both Guadalmedina and the king. Finally, he went over to them, leaving the shelter of the porch. The king’s blue eyes fixed on him, as cold and watery as the eyes of a fish.
“Give him back his sword,” ordered Guadalmedina, and a sergeant approached with the captain’s sword and belt. It did not, in fact, belong to the captain but to the first ruffian from whom he had plundered it after cutting his throat. My master, apparently more bewildered than ever, stood there, holding the sword. Then he slowly buckled on the belt. When he looked up again, his aquiline profile and bushy mustache—from which the rain was now dripping—gave him the appearance of a wary falcon.
“Turn your fire on me,” said Philip, as if thinking out loud.
I was confused at first, then I remembered that these had been the captain’s words when Malatesta was aiming his pistol at the king. My master was now looking at the king coolly and inquisitively, as if wondering where this would all end.
“Your hat, Guadalmedina,” said His Catholic Majesty.
There was a long silence. At last, Álvaro de la Marca obeyed and rather grumpily did as he was asked—he was getting thoroughly soaked—and handed the captain that lovely hat adorned with a pheasant’s feather and a band sewn with diamonds.
“Put it on, Captain Alatriste,” ordered the king.
For the first time since I had known my master, I saw him utterly dumbfounded. And he remained so for a moment, fidgeting with the hat, uncertain what to do.
“Put it on,” repeated the king.
The captain nodded, as if he had only then understood. He looked at the king, and at Guadalmedina. Then he thoughtfully studied the hat and put it on very slowly, as if giving everyone time to change their mind.
“You will never be able to speak of this in public,” warned the king.
“No, I imagine not,” replied my master.
For a long moment, that obscure swordsman and the Lord of Two Worlds stood eye to eye, and on the latter’s impassive Hapsburg face there appeared just the flicker of a smile.
“I wish you luck, Captain. And if you’re ever condemned to be hanged or garrotted, appeal to the king. From today on, you have the right to be beheaded like an hidalgo and a gentleman.”
Thus spoke Philip II’s grandson on that rainy morning at La Fresneda. Then he gave an order; Guadalmedina got into the coach, raised the footboard, and closed the door. The coachman cracked the whip and the carriage set off, ploughing through the mud, followed by the archers on horseback and Cózar’s cries of “Long live the king!,” for, drunk again, or perhaps pretending to be, the actor kept roaring: “Long live the Catholic king,” “Long live the House of Hapsburg,” “God bless Spain, guardian of the true faith, Spain, and the whore who bore her.”
I went over to the captain, quite overcome. My master was watching as the royal carriage disappeared. Guadalmedina’s elegant hat was in marked contrast to the rest of him, for, like me, he was cut, bruised, beaten, and mud-splattered. When I reached his side, I saw that he was laughing softly to himself. When he saw me, he turned and winked, taking off the hat to show me.
“With a bit of luck,” I sighed, “we can get something for those diamonds.”
The captain was studying them. Then he shook his head and put the hat on again.
“They’re fake,” he said.
EXTRACTS FROM
POETRY
WRITTEN BY VARIOUS WITS
OF THIS COURT
Published in the XVIIth century with no imprint
and preserved in “The Counts of Guadalmedina”
section in the Archive and Library of
the Duques de Nuevo Extremo (Seville).
BY DON FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO
TO THE LAWYER SATURNINO APOLO, FRIEND OF BAD POETRY
AND OF OTHER PEOPLE’S PURSES
O petty lawyer, plumping out your purse
With other people’s cash and gold doubloons,
The cream of rascals, no one could be worse,
Brother superior, sucking blood from other’s
wounds,
The pen that you wield—a wild and coarsening
quill—
Can only spit the vilest blots on earth.
“A professor of vile verses” fits the bill,
Arselicker extraordinary, malformed from birth,
A stinking heap, a dunghill of a man,
Of pride and lechery a steaming cesspit,
The greatest farter of lies since the world began
And miner of the muses’ dregs—no respite.
Never your lyre, always a purse you follow,
You offspring of Cacus, you bastard of Apollo!
BY DON LUIS DE GÓNGORA
ON THE FLEETING NATURE OF BEAUTY AND OF LIFE
Whilst gold—sun-burnished—tries to catch
The glitter and the brightness of thy hair;
Whilst the lily-of-the-field can never match
The whiteness of thy brow—beyond compare;
Whilst more eyes yearn to pluck thy ruby lips
Than gaze upon the first carnation of the year;
And whilst thy lovely, glowing neck outstrips
The shiniest crystal—for you have no peer—
Take now enjoyment in thy neck and brow,
Thy lips and hair, before this—thy prime
Of lily, gold, carnation, crystal—now
Is changed to silver or dead violas by time,
And you and they together soon be wrought
To earth, smoke, dust, and shadow—naught!
BY FÉLIX LOPE DE VEGA CARPIO
ON THE DELIGHTS AND CONTRADICTIONS OF LOVE
Fainting, daring, full of rages,
Tender, rough, expansive, shy,
Treacherous, loyal, cowardly, courageous,
Hoping, despairing to live or to die;
Away from one’s love—no center or repose,
Furious, brave, yet ready for flight,
Humble, haughty, all joy, then all woes,
Offended, wary, then dizzy with delight;
Averting one’s gaze from evident deceit,
When poison foul gives off a honey’d smell
And pain is loved and pleasures all retreat,
Then, one believes that heaven’s found in hell
And body and soul are at illusion’s behest,
Such is love—as he who tastes it can attest.
STATEMENT OF APPROVAL
I have read the book entitled The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet, the fifth volume of the so-called Adven
tures of Captain Alatriste, for which don Arturo Pérez-Reverte asks to be granted a license to publish. As with the previous volumes, I found in it nothing repugnant to our Holy Faith or to good customs; rather, as child of the wit and qualities of its author, it contains much salutary advice, which, in the guise of an amusing story or fable, embodies all that is most grave and serious in human philosophy. While it does not abound in Christian or pious reflections, I believe that it will prove edifying to the young reader, for the rhetorically minded will find much to admire in the language, the curious will be entertained by the events described, and, by the ideas, the learned will approve of its rigor, the prudent will take due warning from it, and there is much wholesome wisdom to be gleaned from its somewhat harsh examples and teachings. In short, it offers as much profit as delight.
For all these reasons, it is my view that the author should be granted license to publish.
Dated in Madrid, on the tenth day of the month of October, in the year 2003.
Luis Alberto de Prado y Cuenca,
Secretary of the Council of Castile
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arturo Pérez-Reverte lives near Madrid. Originally a war journalist, he now writes fiction full-time. His novels The Flanders Panel, The Club Dumas, The Fencing Master, The Seville Communion, The Nautical Chart, and The Queen of the South have been translated into twenty-nine languages and published in more than fifty countries. In 2003, he was elected to the Spanish Royal Academy. Visit his website at: www.perez-reverte.com.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet