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

Guadalmedina spotted don Francisco and me, he came running down the last few stairs, elegantly sidestepping a small knot of petitioners—a retired captain, a cleric, a mayor, and three provincial hidalgos hoping for someone to breathe life into their pretensions. Then, having greeted the poet affectionately and clapped me cordially on the back, he took us to one side and came straight to the point.
    “We have a problem,” he said gravely.
    He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, as if wondering whether he should say anything further in my presence. I had, however, already lived through many adventures with Captain Alatriste and don Francisco, such that my loyalty and discretion were proven beyond doubt. Glancing around him to make sure that no palace ears were listening, he touched his cap to a member of the Council of the Exchequer who was walking past beneath the arches—and after whom the group of petitioners scuttled like pigs to a maize field—then, lowering his voice to a whisper, said:
    “Tell Alatriste to change mounts.”
    It took me a while to understand what he meant. Not so the ever-sharp don Francisco, who adjusted his glasses in order to study the count more closely.
    “Are you serious?”
    “I certainly am. Do I look as if I were in the mood for jokes?”
    A silence. I was beginning to understand. Quevedo cursed quietly:
    “Where women are concerned, I am, in every sense and tense, finished. You should give him the message yourself. If you have the balls for it, that is.”
    “You jest,” Guadalmedina replied, shaking his head, unaffected by Quevedo’s free manner of speaking. “I can’t get involved in this.”
    “And yet you happily meddle in other affairs.”
    The count was stroking his mustache and beard, avoiding having to answer.
    “That’s enough, Quevedo. We all have our obligations, and I’m doing more than my part by warning him.”
    “What should I tell him, then?”
    “I don’t know. Tell him to aim less high. Tell him that Austria is besieging the same citadel as he.”
    A long and eloquent silence ensued, during which the two men regarded each other. One was wrestling with feelings of loyalty and prudence, the other with feelings of friendship and self-interest. Well placed as both men were at the time, and enjoying as they did the favor of the court, it would have been far safer, far more sensible, and more comfortable for the latter to say nothing and for the former not to listen. And yet there they were at the foot of the palace steps, exchanging anxious whispers about their friend. I was mature enough to appreciate their dilemma.
    Finally, Guadalmedina shrugged and said:
    “What do you expect? When the king wants something, there’s nothing more to be said. He can say black is white.”
    I thought about this. How strange life is, I concluded. There was that lovely queen in the palace, an extremely beautiful woman who would, one would have thought, be enough to make any man happy, and yet, instead, the king chased after other women, and after mere riffraff, too: maids, actresses, serving wenches. I had no idea then that the king, despite his essentially kindly nature and his famed composure, or perhaps because of the same, was already succumbing to the two great vices which, in a few short years, would put paid to the prestige of the monarchy built up by his grandfather and great-grandfather: namely, an unbridled appetite for women and a complete indifference to affairs of state, both of which—appetite and affairs of state—he habitually left to panders and favorites to deal with.
    “Is it an accomplished fact?”
    “It will be in a day or so, I fear. Or before. The business with your play is helping greatly. The lady had already caught the king’s eye at the theater, but then he watched the rehearsal of the first act—incognito, of course—and he was lost.”
    “What about the husband?”
    “Oh, he knows all about it, naturally.” Guadalmedina made a