Excerpt of Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte
(Page 5 of 9)
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As for the carriage, all I noticed at first were the
hoofbeats of a team of mules and the sound of wheels approaching behind
us. I scarcely paid attention; seeing coaches and carriages was a
normal occurrence, because the street was the principal route to the
Plaza Mayor and the castle, the Alcázar Real. But when I looked up for
an instant as the carriage caught up to us, I saw a door without a
shield and, in the small window, the face of a girl with blond hair
combed into corkscrew curls, and the bluest, clearest, and most
unsettling eyes I have ever seen. Those eyes met mine for an instant,
and then the enchanting creature was borne off down the street.
I shuddered, not knowing why. But my shudder would have
been even stronger had I known that I had just been gazed upon by the
Devil.
"We have no choice but to fight," said don Francisco de
Quevedo.
The table was littered with empty bottles, and every
time that don Francisco was a little too liberal with the wine of San
Martín de Valdeiglesias—which happened frequently—he was ready to call
out Christ himself. Quevedo was slightly lame, a poet, a fancier of
whores, nearsighted, and a Caballero de Santiago. He was as quick with
his wit and his tongue as with his sword, and he was famous at court
for his good poems and bad temper. The latter was, all too often, the
cause for his wandering from exile to exile and prison to prison. It is
well known that though, like all of Madrid, our good lord and king,
Philip the Fourth, and his favored Conde de Olivares appreciated the
poet's satiric verses, the king liked much less being the subject of
them. So from time to time, after the appearance of some sonnet or
anonymous poem in which everyone recognized the poet's hand, the
magistrate's bailiffs and constables would swarm into the tavern, or Quevedo's domicile, or a place where friends met to exchange gossip, to
invite him, respectfully, to accompany them, taking him out of
circulation for a few days or months. As he was stubborn and proud, and
never learned his lesson, these occurrences were numerous, and served
to embitter him.
Quevedo was, nevertheless, an excellent table companion
and a good friend to his friends, among whom he included Captain
Alatriste. Both went often to the Tavern of the Turk, where they would
gather their friends around one of the best tables, which Caridad la
Lebrijana—who had been a whore and still was occasionally for the
captain, though free of charge—usually reserved for them. That morning,
along with don Francisco and the captain, the group was completed by
habitués: Licenciado Calzas, Juan Vicuña, Dómine Pérez, and El Tuerto
Fadrique, the one-eyed apothecary at the Puerta Cerrada.
"No choice but to fight," the poet insisted.
He was, as I have said, visibly "illuminated" by a
bottle or two of Valdeiglesias. He had jumped to his feet, overturning
a taboret, and with his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, was
sending blazing glances toward the occupants of a nearby table. There,
two strangers, whose long swords and capes were hanging on the wall,
had just congratulated the poet on a few verses. Unfortunately, those
lines actually had been written by Luis de Góngora, Quevedo's most
despised adversary in the Republic of Letters—a rival whom, among other
insults, he accused of being a sodomite, a dog, and a Jew. The
newcomers had spoken in good faith, or at least it seemed so, but don
Francisco was not disposed to overlook their words.
From Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Copyright 1996 by Arturo Perez-Reverte. All rights reserved. Excerpt reproduced with the permission of the Putnam Publishing.
