The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet (32 page)

“Mercy!” he cried, sinking down with one knee on the ground, the other slightly flexed.

The ruffian, who was following behind, was taken by surprise.

“Mercy!” the captain cried again.

Turning around, he just had time to catch the look of scorn in the other man’s eyes. “I thought you had more balls,” that look was saying.

“You mis—” he began.

Even as he was saying this, the man realized he had been tricked; but, momentarily distracted, he was no longer pointing his knife directly at his prisoner, and Alatriste, springing up from his half-kneeling position, was already hurling himself, shoulder first, at the man’s belly. The blow almost dislocated the captain’s shoulder, but he managed to knock the man off his feet. The unfinished word became a roar, and there was a great splashing of mud as the captain, making one fist of his two bound hands, gathered all his strength together to deliver one devastating blow to the man’s face, while the man, in turn, was trying to knife him. Luckily for Alatriste, the knife was quite long; had it been shorter, the man could have knifed him in the ribs there and then. At such close quarters, however, the knife-thrust wasn’t forceful enough to penetrate the captain’s rain-sodden buffcoat and merely slithered off. With one knee the captain pinioned the arm carrying the knife. Despite being bound, he had enough freedom of movement in his hands to grab the man’s jaw and press a thumb into each eye. This was no time for fancy footwork or flourishes or fencing protocol, and so he pressed as hard as he could, mentally counting five, ten, fifteen, until he got to eighteen, and the man let out a yell and stopped struggling. The rain diluted the blood pouring down the face of the fallen man and over the captain’s hands, and the captain, unopposed now, grabbed the knife, placed it point down on the man’s throat and drove it in hard through his neck and into the mud. He held it there, bearing down with the whole weight of his body, trying to restrain the man’s flailing legs, until the man, with a weary sigh that emerged not from his mouth but from the blade stuck in his throat, ceased all movement. Alatriste rolled off and lay on his back in the mud to recover his breath. Then, wrenching the knife from the dead man’s throat, he wedged the handle of the knife between knee and tree trunk and managed to cut the rope binding his hands without severing a vein. While he was doing this, he watched as one of the dead man’s feet began to tremble. “How odd,” he thought, even though he had seen the phenomenon before. Even when a man was dead, it was as if something inside him refused to die.

He pillaged the corpse for anything useful. Sword, knife, pistol. The sword was a good one, from Sahagún, although somewhat shorter than what he was used to. He hurriedly strapped on the leather belt. The hunting knife had a horn handle and was two spans in length; he would have preferred a dagger, but it would do. The pistol probably wouldn’t be much use after the struggle in the mud, but he stuck it in his belt anyway, his hands trembling as the cold took hold of him after all that activity. He gave one last glance at the body: the foot had stopped moving now, and beneath the drumming rain, the blood, like watered-down wine, was spreading all around. The dead man’s clothes were soaked and dirty; they would afford the captain little protection from the cold and so he took 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 Cózar, 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 Cózar 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 Cózar 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 Cózar 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 Cózar 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 Velázquez. 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, Íñigo, and Cózar—with the shade of María 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 Cózar 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 Cózar would follow me.

“God save the king!” I heard Cózar 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 memory: Malatesta wheeling about to face us, then furiously barking out orders, meanwhile whipping out his sword with lightning speed, while, in the pouring rain, his men stood, with raised swords, ready to fight us. And, behind them, motionless, his gun still smoking, stood the king, watching us.

“God save the king!” Cózar kept shouting, fierce as a tiger now.

There were two of us against four, for I assumed the actor would be of little, or negligible, help. We had to be quick and careful. As soon as I found myself face-to-face with one of the beaters, I delivered such a hard thrust that I made him drop his sword. Then, slipping past, nimble as a squirrel, I confronted the man behind him. He attacked, blade foremost. I steadied myself as best I could and took my dagger in my left hand, praying to God that I did not slip in the mud. I parried well with my dagger, changed position, and then, crouching down, drove my sword upward, sticking at least three spans of steel into the soft part of his belly. When I drew back my elbow to remove the blade, he fell forward, a look of astonishment on his face, as if to say, “How could such a thing happen to this mother’s son?” However, I was no longer concerned with him, but with the first man, who now had no sword, only a dagger. I whirled around, expecting to find him already on top of me, but then I saw that he was embroiled with Cózar, defending himself as best he could, with one arm injured and his dagger in his left hand, from the fearsome, double-handed blows the actor was dealing out.

Things were not turning out so badly after all. As for me, the wound Angélica had inflicted on me hurt abominably, and I just prayed that with all this activity it did not open up again, leaving me to bleed to death like a stuck pig. I turned to help the captain, and at that instant, as my master was withdrawing his sword from the entrails of a ruffian—who was bent double, blood gushing from his mouth like a bull in a bullring—I noticed that Gualterio Malatesta, a large black figure in the rain, had shifted his sword to his left hand, taken his pistol from his belt, and, after looking first at my master and then at the king, was now pointing it at the latter from a distance of only a few paces. I was too far away to do anything and had to watch, helpless, as the captain, having recovered his sword, rushed to interpose himself between the bullet and its target. Malatesta straightened his arm and took careful aim. I saw how the king, looking his killer in the face, threw down his own gun, stood very erect, and folded his arms, determined that the pistol shot would find him suitably composed.