Captain Alatriste

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  Neither have I forgotten what happened a little later. The hour of the Angelus was approaching and San Felipe was still buzzing when, just in front of the small shops below, I saw a carriage pull to a stop—a carriage I knew very well. I had been leaning on the railing of the steps, a little separated from my elders but close enough to hear what they were saying.

  The eyes looking up—at me—seemed to reflect the color of the magnificent sky far above our heads. They were so blue that everything around me except that color, that sky, that gaze, evaporated from my consciousness. It was like a delectable torment of blueness and light, a lagoon that was impossible to pull myself from. If I am to die someday—I thought at that instant—this is how I want to die: drowning in that color. I eased a little farther away from the group and slowly went down the stairs, almost as if I had no will of my own, or had swallowed a philter brewed by Hypnos.

  And as I walked down the San Felipe steps to Calle Mayor, I could feel upon me—for an instant, like a flash of lucidity in the midst of my rapture, from thousands of leagues away—the worried eyes of Captain Alatriste.

  X. EL PRINCIPE CORRAL

  I fell right into the trap. Or to be more exact, five minutes of conversation was all it took for them to bait it. Even now, after so many years, I want to believe that Angelica de Alquezar was just a girl manipulated by her elders, but not even knowing her as I later knew her can I be sure. Always, to the day of her death, I sensed in her something that no one can learn from another person: an evil, cold wisdom that you see in some women from the time they are girls. Even before that; perhaps for centuries. Deciding who was truly responsible for all that followed is another matter, one that would take a while to analyze, and this is not the place or time. We can sum it up by saying, for now, that of the weapons that God and nature gave woman to defend herself from the stupidity and baseness of man, Angelica de Alquezar had far more than her share.

  The afternoon of the next day, on the way back from El Principe theater, I was remembering her as I had seen her the previous day at the window of the black carriage stopped beneath the steps of San Felipe. Something had struck a false note, as when, in a musical performance that seems perfect, you detect an uncertain chord. All I had done was go over and exchange a few words, enchanted by her mysterious smile and golden curls. Without getting out of the carriage, while her chaperone was occupied in purchasing a few items in the little shops and the coachman seemed absorbed with his mules—that alone should have put me on guard—Angelica de Alquezar again had thanked me for my help in scattering the ragamuffins on Calle Toledo, asked me how I was getting along with my Captain Batiste, or Triste, and inquired about my life and my plans. I strutted a little, I confess. Those wide blue eyes that seemed to take an interest in everything I was saying prodded me to say more than I should have. I spoke of Lope, whom I had just met on the steps, as if he were an old friend. And I mentioned my intention to attend El Arenal of Seville, the play being performed the next day at El Principe. We chatted a bit, I asked her name, and after hesitating a delicious instant, tapping her lips with a small fan, she told me.

  "Angelica comes from 'angel,'" I commented, enslaved. She looked at me with amusement and said nothing for a long while. I felt as if I had been transported to the gates of Paradise. Then her chaperone returned, the coachman caught sight of me, slapped the reins, drove off, and I was left standing there, frozen among the passing parade, feeling as though I had been brutally ripped from some magical place.

  Only later that night, when I could not sleep for thinking of her, and the next day on the way back from the theater, did some peculiar details occur to me. No well-brought-up girl was permitted to chat, right in plain sight, with young nobodies she scarcely knew. I began to sense that I was teetering on the brink of something dangerous and unknown. I even asked myself whether Angelica's attention to me could have been connected with the eventful hours of some nights earlier. However you looked at it, any relation between that blonde angel and the ruffians at the Gate of Lost Souls seemed unimaginable. Added to that, the prospect of attending a play by Lope had clouded my judgment. And that, says the Turk, is how God blinds those He wants to go astray.

  From the monarch to the lowest townsman, in the Spain of Philip the Fourth, everyone had a burning passion for theater. The comedias had three jornadas, or acts, and were written in verse, in several meters and rhymes. Their hallowed authors, as we have seen in the case of Lope, were loved and respected, and the popularity of the actors and actresses was enormous. Every premiere or performance of a famous work brought out town and court, and through the nearly three hours each play lasted, the audience was in thrall. At that time, the productions usually took place in daylight, in the afternoon after the midday meal, in open-air venues know as corrales. There were two in Madrid: El Principe, also known as La Pacheca, and La Cruz. Lope preferred the stage of the latter, which was also the favorite of our lord and king, who loved the theater as much as his wife, Elizabeth of France, did. And just as much as our monarch loved theater, being especially fond of youthful adventures, he also loved, clandestinely, the beautiful actresses of the moment—chief among them Maria Calderon, or La Calderona, who gave him a son, the second Don Juan of Austria.

  Expectation was high that day. One of Lope's celebrated comedias was playing at El Principe! Long before it started, animated groups of theatergoers were wending their way toward the corral, and by noon the narrow street on which it was then located—across from the convent of Santa Ana—was already crowded. The captain and I had met Juan Vicuna and Licenciado Calzas along the way; they, too, were great admirers of Lope's, and Don Francisco de Quevedo had joined us on the same street. So we all went on together to the gate of the theater, where it became nearly impossible to move among the crowd. Every level of society was represented: The elite occupied the boxes overlooking the stage and the benches and standing room for the public, while those further down the social ladder filled the tiers below the boxes and the wooden benches in the yard. Women sat in their own gallery, the cazuekv, the sexes were separated in the corral as in church. And behind a dividing barrier, the open yard was reserved for those who stood throughout the play: the famous mosqueteros, there with their spiritual leader, the cobbler Tabarca. When he passed our group he greeted us gravely, solemnly, puffed up with his own importance.

  By two o'clock, Calle El Principe and the entrances to the corral were swarming with merchants, artisans, pages, students, clergy, scribes, soldiers, lackeys, squires, and ruffians who had dressed for the occasion in cape, sword, and dagger, all calling themselves caballeros and ready to clash over a place to watch the play. Added to that seething, fascinating commotion were the women, who swept into the cazuela amid a flurry of skirts, shawls, and fans, and were pinned like butterflies by the eyes of every gallant twirling his mustaches in the boxes and yard. The women, too, quarreled over their seats, and at times an official had to intervene and establish peace in the spaces reserved for them. Confrontations over someone's having slipped in without paying, and squabbles between the person who had reserved a seat and another person who claimed it frequently provoked a "How dare you?" backed with a sword, all of which demanded the presence of a magistrate and attending bailiffs.

  Not even nobles were above these altercations. The Duque de Fera and Duque de Rioseco, disputing the favors of an actress, had once knifed each other in the middle of a play; they claimed that it was over their seats. Licenciado Luis Quifiones, a timid and good man from Toledo who was a friend of Captain Alatriste's and mine, described, in one of his irreverent ballads, the ambience that lent itself to slashing and stabbing:

  They come to the corral de comedias

  Pouring in like rain, and soaking wet.

  But if they slip in without paying,

  They leave streaming blood—and wetter yet!

  Strange people, we. As someone would later write, confronting danger, dueling, defying authority, gambling life or liberty are things that hav
e always been done, in every corner of the world, whether for hunger, hatred, lust, honor, or patriotism. But to put hand to sword, or to knife another being, merely to get into a theater performance was something reserved for the Spain of my youth. When good, it was very good, but when bad, far worse than bad. It was the era of quixotic, sterile deeds that determined reason and right at the imperious tip of a sword.

  As we made our way to the corral, we had to thread through groups of early arrivals, and beggars harassing everyone who passed by. Of course, half of the blind, lame, amputee, and maimed were malingerers, self-proclaimed hidalgos brought down to begging because of an unfortunate accident. You had to excuse yourself with a courteous "I'm sorry, sir, I am not carrying any money" if you did not want to be berated in a most unpleasant fashion. The manner of begging is different among different peoples. The Germans beg in a group, the French are servile, reciting orisons and pleas, the Portuguese implore with lamentations, the Italians with long tales of misfortunes and ills, and the Spanish with arrogance and threats—saucy, insolent, and impatient.

  We paid a quarter-maravedi at the entrance, three maravedis at the second door, for hospital charity, and twenty maravedis for a seat on the benches. Naturally our places were occupied, although we had paid a lot for them, but not wanting to get into a scuffle with me along, the captain, Don Francisco, and the others decided that we would sit at the back, close to the mosqueteros. I was wide-eyed, taking everything in, fascinated by the people, the vendors of mead and sweetmeats, the buzz of conversations, the whirl of farthingales, skirts, and petticoats in the women's galleries, the elegance of the well-to-do visible at the windows of their boxes. It was said that the king himself often sat there, incognito, when the play was to his taste. And the presence that afternoon of members of the royal guard on the stairs, not wearing uniforms but looking as if they were on duty, seemed to hint at that possibility.

  We kept our eyes on the boxes, hoping to discover our young monarch there, or the queen, but we did not recognize any of the aristocratic faces that occasionally peered from between the lattices. The person we did see, however, was Lope himself, whom the public loudly applauded. We also glimpsed the Conde de Guadalmedina, accompanied by some friends and ladies, and Alvaro de la Marca, who responded with a courteous smile as Captain Alatriste touched the brim of his hat in greeting.

  Some friends offered Don Francisco de Quevedo a place on a bench, and he excused himself and went to join them. Juan Vicuna and Licenciado Calzas were some distance away, discussing the work we were going to see, which Calzas had enjoyed years before at its first performance. As for Diego Alatriste, he was with me, having made a place for me on the barrier separating us from the open yard, so I could see without obstacle. He had bought fried bread with cinnamon and honey that I was crunching with delight, and had a hand on my shoulder to prevent me from being jostled off my place on the barrier. Suddenly I felt his grip tighten, and he slowly withdrew his hand and rested it on the pommel of his sword.

  I followed the direction of his eyes, which had turned steely gray, and among the crowd made out the two men who had been lounging about on the steps of San Felipe the day before. They were standing in the pack of mosqueteros and I thought I saw them exchange some kind of sign with two other men who had taken up positions not too far away. The hats tilted to one side, the folded capes, the long curled mustaches and beards, a scar or two, and their way of cutting their eyes from side to side and standing with their legs planted firmly apart were sure signs of men acquainted with a knife. The corral was filled with such men, it is true, but those four seemed singularly interested in us.

  I heard the thumps that signaled the start of the comedia, the mosqueteros shouted "Sombreros!" and then all doffed their hats. The curtain was drawn, and my attention flew like metal to magnet from the ruffians to the stage, where the characters of dona Laura and Urbana, both wearing cloaks, were entering. In front of the backdrop, a small pasteboard construction represented the Torre del Oro.

  "Famous is El Arenal."

  “I must say I find you light."

  "In my view, there cannot be In all the world a finer sight."

  I still get a thrill when I remember those lines, the first I ever heard on the stage of a corral, and I remember even more clearly because the actress who played dona Laura was the very beautiful Maria de Castro, who was later to fill a certain space in the lives of Captain Alatriste and me. But that day in El Principe, she was the beautiful Laura, who accompanies her uncle Urbana to the port of Seville, where the galleys are about to set sail, and where, by chance, she meets Don Lope, and Toledo, his servant.

  "I must make haste, my ship sails

  Just following the ebb. Ah, what victory it is to flee

  A scheming woman's web!"

  Everything around me vanished; I was completely absorbed in the words coming from the mouths of the actors. Within minutes I was transported to El Arenal, madly in love with Laura, and wishing I had the gallantry of Captains Fajardo and Castellanos, and that I were the one crossing swords with the bailiffs and catchpoles before sailing off in the king's Armada, saying, as Don Lope does,

  "I had to call upon my sword.

  To honor an hidalgo who

  Insults me, I must draw my sword;

  A point of honor, it is true,

  A code we have both lived since birth.

  To refuse to duel a man who vents

  His anger against you, even

  A lunatic, if he gives offense,

  Is not to give a man his worth."

  It was at that moment that one of the spectators standing beside us turned toward the captain and hissed at him to be quiet, although he had not said a word. I turned, surprised, and saw that the captain was staring intently at the man who had hushed him, a rough-looking individual whose cape was folded four times over one shoulder and whose hand was on the grip of his sword.

  The play continued, and I was again drawn into it. Although Diego Alatriste was neither talking nor moving, the man with the folded cape again hissed at him, muttering in a low voice about people who had no respect for the theater or for letting other people hear. I felt the captain's hand, which was again resting on my shoulder, softly push me to one side, and I noticed that he pulled back his cape a little, to uncover the handle of the dagger in a sheath at his left side. At that instant, the first act ended, the public burst into applause, and the captain and our neighbor bored holes into each other with their eyes, though for the moment things went no further. There was one ruffian on either side, and, a short distance away, the other four, who kept us firmly in their view.

  During the dance performed in the entr'acte, the captain caught the eye of Vicuna and Calzas and put me in their care, using the pretext that I could see the second Jornada better from where they were watching. There was a sudden burst of deafening applause, and we all turned toward one of the upper boxes, where people had recognized our lord and king, who had quietly entered at the beginning of the previous act. For the first time, I saw his pale features, the blond wavy hair that fell over his brow and temples, and the mouth with the prominent lower lip so characteristic of the Hapsburgs, still bare of the straight beard he would later adopt. Our monarch was dressed in black velvet, with a starched ruff and discreet silver buttons—faithful to the decree of austerity at court that he himself had just issued—and in his slender hand, so pale the blue veins showed through the skin, he casually held a chamois glove, which he occasionally put to his mouth to hide a smile or words directed to his companions.

  Among these the enthusiastic public had recognized, besides several Spanish gentlemen, the Prince of Wales and Buckingham, whom His Majesty—though maintaining official incognito—had thought it well to invite; all wore their hats, as if the king were not present. The grave sobriety of the Spaniards contrasted with the plumes, ribbons, bows, and jewels of the two Englishmen, whose bearing and youth were greatly celebrated by the public, and the source of no few compliments, f
luttering of fans, and devastating glances from the women's cazuela.

  The second act began. As during the first, I sat drinking in the actors' every word and gesture. Yet just as Captain Fajardo was saying,

  " 'Cousin' he calls her. I do not know

  If this cousin is a true one;

  But she is not the first young girl

  To be falsely claimed a cousin,"