Arturo Perez-Reverte - The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet

“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!”

EPILOGUE

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 :

“I am the vassal, she is his mistress,

I defend him with sword and knife,

Prepared he may be to besmirch my honor,

But I am here and will save his dear life.”

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.

“Here’s to your exploits today, Alatriste,” he said, smiling. “To the king and to you.”

He drank and then held out his gloved hand to shake my master’s hand, either that or to help him to his feet in the hope that he would join him in the toast. The captain, however, remained sitting where he was, not moving, his own mug in his lap, ignoring the proffered hand. He was watching the rain falling on the corpses that lay in a row in the mud.

“Perhaps . . .” Guadalmedina began, then fell silent, and I saw his smile fade on his lips. He glanced at me, and I looked away. He stood for a while, observing us, then, very slowly, he put his mug down on the ground and walked off.

I still said nothing, but sat next to my master, listening to the sound of the rain on the slate roof.

“Captain,” I said at last.

That was all. I knew it was enough. I felt his rough hand on my shoulder, felt him pat me gently on the back of the neck.

“We’re still alive,” he said at last.

I shivered from the cold, and from my own thoughts. I wasn’t thinking only about what had taken place that morning in the woods.

“What will happen to her now?” I asked quietly.

He didn’t look at me.

“Her?”

“To Angélica.”

He said nothing for a while. He was gazing pensively at the path along which Gualterio Malatesta had been carried off on his way to meet his torturer. Then he shook his head and said:

“One can’t always win.”

There came the sound of voices and martial footsteps, the clatter of weapons. The archers, their cuirasses beaded with rain, were mounting their horses as a coach drawn by four grays approached the door. Guadalmedina reappeared, donning an elegant jeweled hat and accompanied by various gentlemen of the royal household. He shot us a perfunctory look and issued orders. More commands were given, horses neighed, and the archers, looking very gallant on their mounts, formed into disciplined ranks. Then the king came out of the lodge. He had exchanged his huntsman’s outfit for a costume of blue brocade and was wearing boots, hat, and carrying a sword. Everyone removed his hat, apart from Guadalmedina, who, as a grandee of Spain, was entitled to keep his on. The king gazed impassively into the distance, looking as remote and aloof as he had during the skirmish in the forest. Head erect, he walked along the porch toward the carriages, passed us without even a glance, and got into the coach that was waiting by the steps. Guadalmedina was about to step in behind him when the king said something in a low voice. We saw Guadalmedina lean toward the king to hear what he was saying, despite the drenching rain. Then he frowned and nodded.