The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet (2 page)

“I’ll send help,” added Alatriste.

He couldn’t wait to be gone. He looked at the tower of the Alcázar Real that rose up above the walls, then back toward the long Segovia bridge. No constables—that was one good thing—and no bluebottles either. No one. The whole of Madrid was watching Tirso’s play, and there he was, wasting time. One way to solve the problem, he thought impatiently, would be to slip a
real
to some errand boy or footboy, of the sort usually to be be found loitering near the city gate, waiting for travelers. They could then take the stranger back to his inn—or indeed to hell or wherever else he might choose to go. He helped the wounded man sit down on a large boulder that had once formed part of the city wall. Then he restored to him hat, cape, sword, and dagger.

“Can I do anything more for you?”

The other man’s breathing was somewhat labored, and his face was still drained of color. He looked at Alatriste for a long while, as if he found it hard to make out his features.

“Tell me your name,” he murmured at last in a hoarse voice.

Alatriste was brushing dust from his boots with his hat.

“My name is my affair,” he replied coldly, putting his hat back on. “And I don’t give a damn about yours.”

 

 

Don Francisco de Quevedo and I saw him enter just as the guitars were signaling the end of the interlude. Hat in hand, short cape folded over one arm, sword pressed to his side, and head lowered so as not to bother anyone as—with many a “Forgive me, sir,” “Excuse me,” “May I come past?”—he pushed his way through the people crowding the yard. He arrived at the front of the lower gallery, greeted the constable of the theater, paid sixteen
maravedís
to the man selling tickets for the tiered seats on the right, then came up the steps and joined us where we were sitting on a bench in the front row, next to the balustrade and near the stage. I was surprised they had let him in, given how packed the theater was, with people still standing out in the street, protesting because there was no more room; later, however, I learned that he had managed to slip in, not through the main door, but through the carriage gate, which was normally used by the ladies to reach the section reserved for them. The porter there—wearing a buffcoat to protect him from the knife-thrusts of those trying to sidle in without paying—was apprenticed to the apothecary in Puerta Cerrada owned by Tuerto Fadrique, an old friend of the captain’s. Nevertheless, once the captain had greased the porter’s palm, paid for the entrance fee and for his seat, and made the usual charitable donation to Madrid’s hospitals, the cost came to two
reales
: no small drain on the captain’s purse, when you think that, for the same price, you could usually get a seat in the upper gallery. Then again, this
was
a new play by Tirso. At the time—along with the venerable Lope de Vega and that other young poet treading hard on his heels, Pedro Calderón—this Mercedarian friar, whose real name was Gabriel Téllez, was both filling the purses of theater-owners and actors and delighting his adoring public, although he never reached the heights of glory and popularity enjoyed by the great Lope. The Madrid garden near Prado Alto from which the play took its name was a splendid, peaceful place, much frequented by the court and known as a fashionable spot, perfect for a romantic rendezvous, and, as I had seen during the first act, it was being used to good effect. The moment Petronila appeared, dressed as a man, in boots and spurs, alongside Tomasa disguised as a young lackey, and before the beautiful María de Castro had even opened her mouth, the audience had begun applauding wildly, even the
mosqueteros
—the musketeers, or groundlings—who were, as usual, crammed into an area at the back of the yard. Their name derived from their habit of always standing together, wearing cape, sword, and dagger, like soldiers ready to be inspected or to go into action—well, that and their tendency to make rowdy comments and to boo. This time, however—urged on by their leader, the shoemaker Tabarca, the musketeers had greeted Tomasa’s words, “Maid and court are two ideas in mutual contradiction,” with warm applause and the grave approving nods of real connoisseurs. It was always important to gain the musketeers’ approval. This was a time when bullfights and plays were attended by both the common people and the nobility, a time when there was a real passion for the theater, and much depended on the success or failure of a first night, so much so that even famous playwrights, hoping to win the musketeers’ favor, would often address a prologue full of praise to that noisy, hard-to-please audience:

For in that picturesque Spain of ours—so extreme in its good qualities, and in its bad—no doctor was ever punished for killing a patient through bloodletting and incompetence, no lawyer was ever banned from practicing because he was conniving, corrupt, or useless, no royal functionary was ever stripped of his privileges, having been caught with his hand in the money box; but there was no such forgiveness for a poet whose lines did not scan or who failed to hit the mark. Indeed, it seemed sometimes that the audience got more pleasure from seeing a bad play than a good one; they enjoyed and applauded the latter, of course, but a bad play gave them license to whistle, talk, shout, and hurl insults—“A pox on’t,” “I’faith,” “Od’s blood,” “Why, not even Turks and Lutherans would put on such a shambles,” et cetera. The most hopeless of block-heads made themselves out to be experts, and duennas and clumsy serving wenches assumed the role of learned and discerning critics and rattled their keys to show their disapproval. They thus found an outlet for that most Spanish of pleasures, namely, venting all the spleen they felt for their rulers by kicking up a row in the safety of the crowd. For, as everyone knows, Cain was an hidalgo, a pure-blooded Christian, and a Spaniard.

Anyway, as I was saying, Captain Alatriste finally joined us, where we had been saving him a seat until another member of the audience demanded to take it. Wanting to avoid a quarrel—not out of cowardice but out of respect for the place and the circumstances—don Francisco de Quevedo had let the importunate fellow do as he wished, warning him, however, that the seat was already taken and that as soon as its rightful occupant arrived, he would have to relinquish it. The disdainful “Hmm, we’ll see about that” with which the man responded as he made himself comfortable was immediately transformed into a look of wary respect when the captain appeared. Don Francisco shrugged and indicated to the captain his now occupied place on the bench, and my master fixed the intruder with his cold green eyes. The man was a wealthy artisan (as I found out later, he held the lease on the ice wells in Calle de Fuencarral), and the sword hanging from his leather belt looked about as much in keeping with him as a harquebus would on a Christ. He took in at one glance the captain’s ice-cold eyes, his veteran’s bushy mustache, the guard on his sword all dented and scuffed, and the long, narrow dagger, the hilt of which was just visible at his hip. Without saying a word, as silent as a clam, he gulped hard and, on the pretext of leaning over to buy a glass of mead from a passing vendor, shuffled farther up the bench, robbing his neighbor on the other side of some of his space, but freeing up my master’s place entirely.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” commented don Francisco.

“I met with a slight setback,” replied the captain, shifting his sword slightly to one side so that he could sit more comfortably.

He smelled of sweat and metal, as in times of war. Don Francisco noticed the stain on the sleeve of his doublet.

“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:

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:
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 pleasing 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: