The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet by Arturo Pérez-Reverte Page B

master, incapable of imagining him slashing a woman’s face with a knife. He, however, remained impassive, elbows on the table, as he stared into his mug of wine. Don Franciso caught my look, cast a sideways glance at Alatriste, and said no more. What other things, I wondered, lay behind those silences. And I shuddered inside, as I always did when I got a glimpse of the captain’s dark inner life. It is never pleasant to grow in years and understanding and thus penetrate into the more hidden recesses of one’s hero’s mind and life, and, as I grew more perceptive with passing time, I saw things in Diego Alatriste that I would have preferred not to see.
    “But then, of course,” said Contreras, who had also seen the expression on my face and feared perhaps that he had gone too far, “we were young and spirited. I remember one occasion, in Corfu it was . . .”
    And he launched into another story. Along the way, he mentioned the names of various mutual friends, such as Diego, Duke of Estrada, a comrade of my master’s during the disastrous attack on the Kerkennah Islands, where they both nearly lost their lives trying to save that of Álvaro de la Marca, Count of Guadalmedina. The count, of course, had since exchanged his soldierly accoutrements for the post of confidant to Philip IV and, according to Quevedo, now accompanied the king each night on his romantic sorties. Forgetting my earlier gloomy thoughts, I listened to them talk, fascinated by their accounts of galleys and ships being boarded, of slaves and booty. The way Captain Contreras told them, these events took on fabulous proportions: the famous incident when, with the Marquis of Santa Cruz, they set fire to the Berber fleet off La Goleta; the description of idyllic places at the very foot of Mount Vesuvius; the youthful orgies and acts of bravado, when Contreras and my master would spend in a matter of days the money they had earned from pursuing pirates around the Greek islands and the Turkish coast. Between swigs of the wine we were clumsily spilling all over the table, Captain Contreras felt moved to recite some lines written in his honor by Lope de Vega and into which he now introduced my master’s name by way of a tribute:
    “Contreras’s valor was fully tested,
And laurels hard won, in the fight for Spain.
Alatriste and he were never bested
During that bloody Turkish campaign.
Even their slightest, most modest feat
(For a blade of steel cannot deceive)
Brought them praise and honor sweet.”
    Alatriste still said nothing—his sword hanging from the back of his chair and his hat on the floor on top of his folded cloak—he merely nodded now and then, uttered the occasional monosyllabic comment, and managed a faint, courteous smile whenever Contreras, Quevedo, or Lopito de Vega mentioned his name. I listened and watched, drinking in the words, captivated by every anecdote and every memory, and feeling that I was one of them—and that I had every right to feel so, too. After all, I may have been only sixteen, but I was already a veteran of Flanders and some other rather murkier campaigns; I had both the scars to show for it and reasonable skills as a swordsman. This confirmed me in my intention to join the militia as soon as I could and to win my own laurels so that, one day, as I recounted my exploits at a tavern table, someone might recite a few lines of poetry in my honor, too. I did not know then that my wishes would be more than granted, and that the road I was preparing to take would also lead me to the farther side of glory and of fame. True, I had known war in Flanders, but had done so with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of the innocent, for whom the militia is a magnificent spectacle; the true face of war casts a dark shadow over heart and memory. I look back now from this interminable old age in which I seem to be suspended as I write these memoirs and—beneath the murmur of the flags flapping in the wind and the drumroll that marks the