The captain said nothing. Some ladies clutching rosaries and wearing scapulars, robes, and full black skirts, were standing nearby with their husbands; they immediately drew into a knot, whispering and furiously fanning themselves as they shot glances at the carriage sharp as Berber arrows; meanwhile, their grave and equally black-clad husbands struggled to keep their composure, twirling their mustaches and staring at the carriage with barely concealed lust. As the actors approached, don Francisco told a story illustrating Cózar’s blithe, inventive nature. In one particular scene during a performance in Ocaña, he had forgotten to bring on stage with him the dagger with which he was supposed to slit another actor’s throat. When he realized his mistake, he had immediately snatched off his own false beard and pretended to strangle the other man with it. Afterward, the company had had to flee across the fields, pursued by furious townsfolk hurling stones at them.
“He’s altogether a very jolly rascal,” said Quevedo.
As the carriage drew nearer, Cózar recognized don Francisco and my master, and the rogue bowed very reverently, a bow in which I—trained now in courtly subtleties—saw a high degree of mockery. “With such courtesies, and with my wife,” the gesture said, “I pay for my doublet and my hat, and your purse is my revenge.” Or, in Quevedo’s words:
He’s more of a cuckold, he who pays,
Than the man who takes the money,
For I get to keep the lovely wife,
The beehive, and the honey.
As for the actor’s spouse, the look and the smile that she directed at the captain spoke eloquently of very different things—complicity and promise. She made as if to cover her face with her cloak, but then did not, a gesture that was somehow more provocative than if she had done nothing; and I noticed that my master slowly and discreetly took off his hat and stood there with it in his hand until the carriage had borne the actors away down the avenue. Then he put his hat back on again, turned, and met the hate-filled gaze of don Gonzalo Moscatel, who, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, was watching us from the other side of the avenue, angrily chewing the ends of his mustache.
“Ye gods,” muttered don Francisco, “that’s all we need.”
The butcher was standing on the running board of a private carriage that was as elaborately decorated as a Flemish castle, with two dapple-gray mules between the shafts and a coachman on the driver’s seat; inside, next to the open door on which don Gonzalo Moscatel was leaning, sat a young woman. She was the orphaned niece with whom he lived and whom he wished to see married to his friend, the lawyer Saturnino Apolo, a base and mediocre man if ever there was one, who apart from taking the bribes proper to his profession—and which were the origin of his friendship with the butcher—frequented Madrid’s narrow little literary world and fancied himself a poet, which he wasn’t, for his only skill lay in bleeding money out of successful authors, flattering them, and holding their chamber pot, if I may put it so, like someone playing for free in the gaming den of the Muses. He and Moscatel were as thick as thieves, and he liked to boast that he knew everyone in the world of the theater, thus fomenting the butcher’s hopes with regard to María de Castro and wheedling more money out of him, meanwhile hoping to get the niece as well as her dowry. For that was his roguish specialty: living off other people’s purses, so much so that don Francisco de Quevedo himself, seeing that all Madrid despised the wretch, dedicated a famous sonnet to him, which ended with these lines:
Never your lyre, always a purse you follow,
You offspring of Cacus, you bastard of Apollo!
Moscatel’s young niece was very pretty, her suitor the lawyer utterly loathsome, and don Gonzalo, her uncle, absurdly jealous of her honor. The whole situation—niece, marriage, don Gonzalo’s theatrical character and temperament, and his jealousy of Captain Alatriste regarding María de Castro—seemed more the stuff of plays than of real life; after all, Lope and Tirso filled the theaters with such plots. Then again, the theater owed its success precisely to the fact that it reflected what went on in the street, and the people in the street, in turn, imitated what they saw on the stage. Thus, in the thrilling, colorful theater that was my century, we Spaniards sometimes tricked ourselves out to play comedy, and sometimes to play tragedy.
“I bet he won’t raise any objections,” murmured don Francisco.
Alatriste, who was abstractedly studying Moscatel through half-closed eyes, turned to the poet.
“Objections to what?”
“To vanishing, of course, when he finds out he’s been encroaching on the royal domain.”
The captain smiled faintly but made no comment. From the far side of the avenue, the butcher, bristling with gravity and wounded pride, continued to shoot us murderous looks. He was wearing a short French cape, slashed sleeves, garters of the same vermilion red as the feather in his hat, and a very long sword with ornate guard and quillons. I looked at the niece. She was modest, dark-complexioned, and wore a full-skirted dress, a mantilla on her head, and a gold cross around her neck.
“I’m sure you’ll agree,” said a voice beside us, “that she is very pretty indeed.”
We turned around, surprised. Lopito de Vega had come up behind us and there he was, thumbs hooked in the leather belt from which hung his sword, cloak wrapped about one arm, and his soldier’s hat pushed slightly back over the bandage he still wore about his head. He was gazing adoringly at Moscatel’s niece.
“Don’t tell me,” exclaimed don Francisco, “that she is she.”
“She is.”
We were all astonished, and even Captain Alatriste regarded Lope’s son with a certain degree of interest.
“Does don Gonzalo Moscatel approve of your courtship?” asked don Francisco.
“No, on the contrary,” the young man said, bitterly twisting the ends of his mustache. “He says his honor is sacred, et cetera. And yet half Madrid knows that as the city’s supplier of meat, he’s stolen money hand over fist. Nevertheless, Señor Moscatel cares only for his honor. You know—grandparents, coats of arms, ancestry . . . the usual thing.”
“Well, given who he is and with a name like that, this Moscatel fellow must go back a long way.”
“Oh, yes, as far back as the Goths, of course. Like everyone else.”
“Alas, my friend,” sighed Quevedo, “Spain the grotesque never dies.”
“Well, someone should kill her, then. Listening to that fool talk, anyone would think we were still in the days of the Cid. He has sworn to kill me if he finds me loitering near his niece’s window.”
Don Francisco looked at Lopito with renewed interest.
“And do you or do you not loiter?”
“Do I look like a man who wouldn’t loiter, Señor de Quevedo?”
And Lopito briefly described the situation to us. It was not a caprice on his part, he explained. He sincerely loved Laura Moscatel, for that was the young woman’s name, and he was prepared to marry her as soon as he was given the post of ensign he was seeking. The problem was that, as a professional soldier and the son of a playwright—Lope de Vega may have been ordained as a priest, but his reputation as a rake placed the morality of the whole family in jeopardy—his chances of obtaining don Gonzalo’s permission were remote indeed.
“And have you tried every possible argument?”
“I have, but without success. He refuses point-blank.”