Arturo Perez-Reverte - The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet

Sometimes God, or the devil, guides your feet in the right direction. I turned back and pressed my ear to the door. There were at least two men on the other side, and they were talking about a hunt: deer, rabbits, beaters. I wondered what the captain had to do with all that. Then they said another name: Philip. He’ll be there at such and such a hour, they were saying. In such and such a place. They only mentioned his name, but I had a sudden presentiment that sent a shudder through me. The nearness of Angélica’s room made it easy enough to make the logical connection. I must be standing outside the room of Luis de Alquézar, Angélica’s uncle, the royal secretary. Then a word and another name reached me through the door: “dawn” and “La Fresneda.” My knees almost buckled beneath me, whether this was because I was still weak from my wound or because I was so shaken by the idea that had suddenly installed itself inside my head, I don’t know. The memory of the cavalier in the yellow doublet resurfaced and threaded together all those disparate fragments. María de Castro had gone to spend the night at La Fresneda. The person she had gone to meet was planning to go hunting at dawn, with just two beaters as escort. The Philip they had mentioned was none other than Philip IV. They were talking about the king!

I leaned against the wall, trying to order my thoughts. Then I took a deep breath and gathered all my strength—for I was going to need it, just as long, that is, as the wound in my back didn’t open. My first thought was to go to see don Francisco de Quevedo. So I went down the stairs as quietly as I could. Don Francisco, however, was not in his room. I went in and lit a candle. The table was full of books and papers and the bed undisturbed. Then I remembered the Count of Guadalmedina and walked across the large courtyard to the rooms occupied by members of the royal entourage. As I feared, I was not allowed through. One of the guards, who knew me, said that they wouldn’t wake up His Excellency at that hour for all the wine in Spain. “No matter what,” he added. I did not tell them just how urgent this particular matter was. I knew what catchpoles, soldiers, and guards were like, and knew that telling my story to such lumps of flesh was tantamount to talking to a wall. They were typical big-bellied, mustachioed veterans who simply wanted a quiet life. Getting involved was-n’t part of the job, which was to make sure that no one got past them—and no one did. Talking to them about conspiracies and regicides would be like talking to them about the man in the moon, and I risked, in the process, getting thrown in a dungeon. I asked them if they had paper I could write on and they said no. I went back to don Francisco’s room, where, making use of his pen, inkwell, and sandbox, I composed, as best I could, a note for him and another for Álvaro de la Marca. I sealed both letters with wax, scrawled their respective names on them, left the poet’s note on his bed, and returned to the guards.

“This is for the count as soon as he wakes up. It’s a matter of life and death.”

They seemed unconvinced, but they kept the note. The guard who knew me promised that he would give it to the count’s servants if one of them happened to pass or, at the very latest, when he came off duty. I had to be content with that.

The Cañada Real was my last faint hope. Don Francisco might have gone back for more wine and might still be there, drinking and writing; or, having bent his elbow one too many times, he might have decided to sleep there rather than wend his unsteady way back to the palace. I went over to one of the servants’ doors and walked across the esplanade beneath a black, starless sky that was just beginning to grow light in the east. I was shivering in the cold wind blowing down from the mountains in brief rainy gusts. While this helped to clear my head, it gave me no new ideas. I walked quickly, anxiously. The image of Angélica came into my mind. I sniffed my hands, which still smelled of her. Then I shivered to remember the touch of her delicious skin and cursed my bad luck. The wound to my back hurt more than I can say.

The inn was closed, with only a dim lamp hanging above the lintel. I knocked several times at the door and then stood there, deliberating, uncertain what to do. All paths were blocked to me, and time was passing implacably.

“It’s too late to be drinking,” said a voice nearby, “or too early.”

Startled, I turned round. In my anxiety, I had failed to notice the man sitting on the stone bench beneath the chestnut tree. He had no hat on and was wrapped in his cloak, with his sword and a demijohn of wine beside him. I realized it was Rafael de Cózar.

“I’m looking for Señor de Quevedo.”

He shrugged and looked distractedly about him.

“He left with you. I don’t know where he is.”

His words were somewhat slurred. If he had been drinking all night, I thought, he must be as drunk as a lord.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Drinking and thinking.”

I went over to him and sat down beside him, pushing his sword out of the way. I must have looked the very picture of despair.

“In this cold?” I said. “It’s hardly the weather for sitting outside.”

“I carry my own heat inside me,” he said and gave a strange laugh. “It’s good, that, isn’t it? Heat inside and horns outside. How does that verse go?”

And, taking two more drafts from the demijohn, he recited mockingly:

“Yes, business is good, no need to skimp,

But tell me, please, where did you learn

To be your mistress’s husband

And your own wife’s pimp?”

I fidgeted uneasily on the bench, and not just because of the cold.

“I think you’ve had too much to drink.”

“And how much is ‘too much’?”

I didn’t know what to say, and so we sat for a while in silence. Cózar’s hair and face were spattered with drops of rain that glittered like frost in the light of the lamp. He was studying me hard.

“You seem to have your own problems,” he said at last.

When I did not reply, he offered me some wine.

“No,” I said glumly, “that isn’t the kind of help I need.”

He nodded gravely, almost philosophically, stroking his long side whiskers. Then he raised the demijohn, and the wine gurgled down his throat.

“Any news of your wife?”

He gave me a vague, sullen, sideways look, the demijohn still held high. Then he put it slowly down on the bench.

“My wife leads her own life,” he said, wiping his mustache with the back of his hand. “And that has its advantages and its disadvantages.”

He opened his mouth and raised one finger, ready to recite something else. But I was in no mood for more poetry.

“They’re going to use her against the king,” I said.

He was staring at me hard, mouth open and finger raised.

“I don’t understand.”

This sounded almost like a plea to be allowed to continue in that state of incomprehension. I, however, had had enough of him and his bottle of wine, of the cold and the pain in my back.

“There’s a plot against the king,” I finally said in exasperation. “That’s why I’m looking for don Francisco.”

He blinked. His eyes were no longer vague, there was a frightened look in them.

“And what has that got to do with María?”

I pulled a scornful face. I couldn’t help it.

“She’s the bait. The trap is set for dawn. The king is going hunting with only two men as escort. Someone wants to kill him.”

There was the sound of broken glass at our feet. The demijohn had just fallen to the ground, shattering inside its wicker covering.

“Od’s blood,” he murmured. “I thought I was the one who was drunk.”