The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet (33 page)

“Turn your fire on me!” cried the captain.

The Italian took no notice. He held his aim on the king. He squeezed the trigger and flint struck steel.

Nothing happened.

The powder was wet.

 

 

 

 

Sword in hand, Diego Alatriste placed himself between Malatesta and the king. I had never seen such an expression on Malatesta’s face. He was almost beside himself. He kept shaking his head incredulously and staring at the pistol that lay useless in his hand.

“So close,” he said.

Then he seemed to recover himself. He looked at the captain as if seeing him for the first time, or as if he had forgotten he was there, and then, from beneath the dripping brim of his hat, he gave a faint, sinister smile.

“I was so close,” he repeated bitterly.

Then he shrugged and threw down the weapon, taking his sword in his right hand.

“You’ve ruined everything.”

He took off his cloak, which was hampering his movements. He indicated the king with a lift of his chin, but continued staring at Alatriste.

“Do you really think such a master is worth it?”

“Come on,” said the captain coldly, meaning, “We have business of our own to settle.” He used his sword to point to the one Malatesta was holding. The Italian looked first at the two blades and then at the king, wondering if there was some way he might still finish the job. Then he shrugged again while carefully folding up his rain-sodden cloak as if to wrap it around his left arm.

From Rafael de Cózar, still embattled with his opponent, there came repeated cries of: “God save the king!”

Malatesta glanced over at him with a look that was part amused and part resigned. Then came that smile. The captain noticed the dangerous white slit in that pockmarked face, the cruel glint in those dark eyes. And he said to himself: “The snake isn’t beaten yet.” This certainty came to him suddenly, forcing him to react and put himself on guard just moments before the Italian threw his cloak over the captain’s sword, rendering it useless. Alatriste lost valuable seconds disentangling his blade from the wet cloth, and while he was doing so, Malatesta’s blade glittered before him as if seeking somewhere to bury itself, then shifted from him to the king.

This time, the Monarch of Two Worlds stepped back. Alatriste caught the startled look in his blue eyes, and this time, the august, prominent Hapsburg lower lip quivered in expectation of what would follow. That deadly thrust came far too close for him to remain entirely unmoved, thought the captain, given that he was obliged to gaze into Malatesta’s dark eyes, which was like gazing into the eyes of Death itself. However, the brief moment gained in divining his enemy’s intention proved long enough for the captain to act. His sword clashed with Malatesta’s, averting what, it had seemed, would be an inevitable blow. Malatesta’s blade slid along his, missing the royal throat by inches.

“Porca miseria!”
cursed the Italian.

And that was that. He turned tail and ran like a deer into the woods.

 

 

 

 

I had watched the scene from a distance, unable to help in any way, for it all happened in less time than it would take to say “Ave Maria.” When I saw Malatesta fleeing, and while the captain was making sure that the king had not been wounded, I, without thinking, raced after Malatesta, through the puddles, sword in hand. I ran with my arm held high to protect me from the branches showering me with raindrops. Malatesta had little advantage over me; I was young and had strong legs, and so I soon caught up with him. He suddenly turned, saw that I was alone, and stopped to recover his breath. It was raining so hard now that the mud beneath my feet seemed to be seething.

“Stay where you are,” he said, pointing his sword at me.

I stopped where I was, uncertain what to do. The captain was perhaps not far behind, but for the moment Malatesta and I were alone.

“That’s enough for today,” he added.

He started walking again, backward this time, without taking his eyes off me. Then I noticed that he was limping. Each time he put his weight on his right foot, he grimaced with pain. He had probably been wounded in the skirmish or hurt himself running. In the rain, drenched and dirty, he looked very tired. His hat had fallen off as he ran, and his long, wet hair clung to his face. Injury and fatigue, I thought, might make us more equal and give me a chance.

“It’s not worth it,” he said, guessing what was in my mind.

I kept walking. The wound in my back was intensely painful, but I was still full of energy. I advanced farther. Malatesta shook his head as if in disbelief at my folly. Then he gave a faint smile, retreated another step, repressing a grimace of pain, and readied himself. Very cautiously I tested him out, the ends of our blades touching, while I sought some way of getting under his guard. He, the more experienced, merely waited. He may have been injured, but, as we both knew, he was by far the more skillful swordsman. I, however, felt almost intoxicated, enclosed in a kind of gray bubble that fogged my judgment. Here he was, and I had my sword in my hand.

He dropped his guard for a moment, as if carelessly, but I could see it was a trick, and so remained where I was, not attacking, elbow bent and the hilt of my sword on a level with my eyes, watching for a genuine opening. The rain continued to fall, and I was taking care not to slip in the mud, for I would not survive long if I did.

“You’ve grown prudent, boy.”

He was smiling, and I knew his intent was to draw me in. I resisted. Now and then, I wiped the rain from my eyes with the back of my knife hand, but always kept my eyes trained on him.

Behind me, amongst the trees and the scrub, I could hear someone calling my name. The captain was looking for us. I called out to him so that he could find us. Meanwhile, from beneath the hair clinging to his face in the rain, the Italian’s eyes darted to and fro, looking for some way out. In a flash, I lunged forward.

The whoreson was good, though, very good, and very skilled. He effortlessly parried a thrust that would have run a lesser man through, and when he counterattacked, he dealt me a back-edged cut so close to my eyes that had his injured leg not held him back, I would have taken a five-inch wound to my face. He managed to disarm me, however, sending my sword flying several feet. I didn’t even think to cover myself with my dagger, but stood there frozen like a startled hare, waiting for the coup de grâce. Then I saw Malatesta’s face contract in pain; he suppressed a howl of rage, involuntarily retreated two steps, only to have his bad leg fail him again.

He fell backward and sat down in the mud, his sword in his hand and a curse on his lips. For a moment, we looked at each other, me stunned and him shaken. It was an absurd situation. Finally, I managed to get a grip on myself and ran over to fetch my sword, which lay at the foot of a tree. When I stood up, Malatesta, still sitting on the ground, made a rapid movement; something whisked past me like a metallic flash of lightning, and a dagger fixed itself, quivering, in the trunk, only a few inches from my face.

“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!”

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
:

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.