The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet Read Online Free PDF Page A

husband, once he had huffed and puffed and brandished his famous sword—which was known throughout Spain—was usually very tolerant of such admirers, whether it was his wife they were interested in or one of the other women in his company, especially if, as was the case with that supplier of meat to Madrid, the admirer had the where-withal. His evident genius as actor aside, it was accepted as a universal truth that no man’s purse was safe with him. This perhaps explained the length of time it had taken him to come downstairs to defend his honor. As people used to say:
    Take twelve cuckolds or, rather, players—
For they hardly differ as one may gauge—
Add half a dozen ladies of the stage,
And you’ll have the six half-wives of the
aforesaid players.
    The captain, fairly embarrassed by the whole affair, was about to make his excuses and continue on his way, when the wife very sweetly thanked him for his intervention, although it was impossible to know whether she did so in order to provoke her pursuer or simply because she enjoyed that subtle and dangerous game in which women so often engage. Then she looked him up and down and invited him to visit her at the Corral de la Cruz, where they were giving the final performances of a play by Rojas Zorrilla. She was smiling broadly as she said this, showing off the perfect oval of her face and her equally perfect white teeth, which Luis de Góngora—don Francisco de Quevedo’s mortal enemy—would doubtless have compared to mother-of-pearl or tiny seed pearls. Alatriste, an old hand in these and other such situations, saw in that look some kind of promise.
    And two months later, there he was in the dressing rooms of the Corral de la Cruz, having enjoyed the fruits of that promise several times—Cózar’s sword not having reappeared—and more than ready to continue doing so. Meanwhile, don Gonzalo Moscatel, whom he had met on subsequent occasions with no further consequences, continued to shoot him fierce, jealous looks. María de Castro was not a woman to keep just one iron in the fire, and she continued worming money out of Moscatel, flirting shamelessly with him, but never allowing things to go any further than that—every meeting at the Gate of Guadala jara cost the butcher a fortune in jewels and fine cloths—and she used Alatriste, whom the other man knew all too well by reputation, to keep him at bay. Thus, ever hopeful, and ever starved, the butcher obstinately persisted, refusing to give up his chance of bliss. He was encouraged in this, too, by La Castro’s husband, who, as well as being a great actor was also an out-and-out scoundrel, and, as he had with other such admirers, continued to use vague promises to squeeze Moscatel’s purse dry. Alatriste knew, of course, that—Moscatel apart—he was not the only man to enjoy the actress’s favors. Other men visited her, and it was said that even the Count of Guadalmedina and the Duke of Sessa had exchanged more than words with her; as don Francisco de Quevedo put it, she was a woman who charged a thousand ducats a stumble. The captain could not compete with either man in rank or money; he was simply a veteran soldier who earned a living as a paid swordsman. Yet, for some reason that escaped him—women’s souls had always seemed to him unfathomable—María de Castro granted him gratis what she denied outright to others or for which she charged her weight in gold:
    An important point, pray listen to me:
With moneyed Moors she asks a lot,
With Christians she does it for free.
    Diego Alatriste drew aside the curtain. He was not in love with that woman, nor with any other, but María de Castro was the most beautiful actress of her day, and he enjoyed the rare privilege of occasionally having her all to himself. No one was going to offer him a kiss like the one she was now placing on his lips, when, later, a span of steel, a bullet, disease, or time itself would set him sleeping forever in his grave.

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