Read Online The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet by Arturo Pérez-Reverte - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Tags: Fiction, Action & Adventure
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body that lay resting now, exhausted, after their long interchange of kisses and caresses. He moved, and his shadow seemed to slide like the shadow of a ghost over her pale naked body. By Christ, she was beautiful.
He went over to the table and poured himself a little wine. As he did so, he went from the mat to the flagstoned floor, and the cold sent a shiver over his weather-beaten soldier’s skin. He drank, still keeping his eyes on the woman. Hundreds of men of all classes and stations, men of quality and with nice full purses, would have given anything to enjoy her for a few minutes; and yet there he was, sated with her flesh and her mouth. His only fortune was his sword and his only future, oblivion. How odd they are, he thought again, the mechanisms that move the minds of women. Or, at least, the minds of women like her. The killer’s purse, which he had placed on the table without saying a word—doubtless the price of his own life—contained only enough for her to buy herself some fashionable new clogs, a fan, and some ribbons. And yet there he was. And there she was.
“Diego.”
This was spoken in a sleepy murmur. The woman had turned over in bed and was looking at him.
“Come here, my love.”
He put down his glass of wine and went over to her, sitting down on the edge of the bed and placing one hand on her warm flesh. My love, she had said. He didn’t even have enough money to pay for his own funeral—an event he postponed each day with his sword—nor was he an elegant fop, or a gallant, cultivated man, the sort admired by women in the street or at evening parties. My love. He suddenly found himself remembering the last lines of a sonnet by Lope that he had heard that afternoon at the poet’s house:
She loves you, loathes you, treats you well, then ill. Like a leech or surgeon’s knife, she’s double-edged: Sometimes she’ll cure, but sometimes she will kill.
In the moonlight, María de Castro’s eyes looked incredibly beautiful, and it accentuated the dark abyss of her half-open mouth. So what, thought the captain. My love or not my love. My love or someone else’s love. My madness or my sanity. My, your, his heart. That night he was alive, and that was all that counted. He had eyes to see and a mouth to kiss with. And teeth to bite. None of the many sons of bitches who had crossed his path, Turks, heretics, constables, or bullies, had succeeded in stealing this moment from him. He was still breathing, although many had tried to stop him doing so. And now, as if to confirm this, one of her hands was caressing his skin, lingering over each old scar. “My love,” she said again. Don Francisco de Quevedo would doubtless have got a good poem out of this, fitting it all into fourteen perfect hendecasyllables. Captain Alatriste, however, merely smiled to himself. It was good to be alive, at least for a while longer, in a world in which no one gave anything away for nothing, in which everything had to be paid for—before, during, and afterward. “I must have paid something,” he thought. “I don’t know how much or when, but I must have done so if life is rewarding me with the prize of having a woman look at me as she is looking at me now, even if only for a few nights.”
3. THE ALCÁZAR DE LOS AUSTRIAS
“I am very much looking forward to your play, Señor de Quevedo.”
The queen was the extremely beautiful daughter of Henry IV of France, le Béarnois ; she was twenty-three years old, pale-complexioned, and had a dimple in her chin. Her accent was as charming as her appearance, especially when, in her struggle to roll her r ’s, she frowned a little, earnestly and courteously, as befitted such a refined and intelligent queen. She was clearly born to sit on a throne, and although she came from a foreign land, she reigned over Spain as a loyal Spaniard, just as her sister-in-law, Ana de Austria—sister of our Philip IV and wife of Louis XIII—reigned as a loyal Frenchwoman in her
He went over to the table and poured himself a little wine. As he did so, he went from the mat to the flagstoned floor, and the cold sent a shiver over his weather-beaten soldier’s skin. He drank, still keeping his eyes on the woman. Hundreds of men of all classes and stations, men of quality and with nice full purses, would have given anything to enjoy her for a few minutes; and yet there he was, sated with her flesh and her mouth. His only fortune was his sword and his only future, oblivion. How odd they are, he thought again, the mechanisms that move the minds of women. Or, at least, the minds of women like her. The killer’s purse, which he had placed on the table without saying a word—doubtless the price of his own life—contained only enough for her to buy herself some fashionable new clogs, a fan, and some ribbons. And yet there he was. And there she was.
“Diego.”
This was spoken in a sleepy murmur. The woman had turned over in bed and was looking at him.
“Come here, my love.”
He put down his glass of wine and went over to her, sitting down on the edge of the bed and placing one hand on her warm flesh. My love, she had said. He didn’t even have enough money to pay for his own funeral—an event he postponed each day with his sword—nor was he an elegant fop, or a gallant, cultivated man, the sort admired by women in the street or at evening parties. My love. He suddenly found himself remembering the last lines of a sonnet by Lope that he had heard that afternoon at the poet’s house:
She loves you, loathes you, treats you well, then ill. Like a leech or surgeon’s knife, she’s double-edged: Sometimes she’ll cure, but sometimes she will kill.
In the moonlight, María de Castro’s eyes looked incredibly beautiful, and it accentuated the dark abyss of her half-open mouth. So what, thought the captain. My love or not my love. My love or someone else’s love. My madness or my sanity. My, your, his heart. That night he was alive, and that was all that counted. He had eyes to see and a mouth to kiss with. And teeth to bite. None of the many sons of bitches who had crossed his path, Turks, heretics, constables, or bullies, had succeeded in stealing this moment from him. He was still breathing, although many had tried to stop him doing so. And now, as if to confirm this, one of her hands was caressing his skin, lingering over each old scar. “My love,” she said again. Don Francisco de Quevedo would doubtless have got a good poem out of this, fitting it all into fourteen perfect hendecasyllables. Captain Alatriste, however, merely smiled to himself. It was good to be alive, at least for a while longer, in a world in which no one gave anything away for nothing, in which everything had to be paid for—before, during, and afterward. “I must have paid something,” he thought. “I don’t know how much or when, but I must have done so if life is rewarding me with the prize of having a woman look at me as she is looking at me now, even if only for a few nights.”
3. THE ALCÁZAR DE LOS AUSTRIAS
“I am very much looking forward to your play, Señor de Quevedo.”
The queen was the extremely beautiful daughter of Henry IV of France, le Béarnois ; she was twenty-three years old, pale-complexioned, and had a dimple in her chin. Her accent was as charming as her appearance, especially when, in her struggle to roll her r ’s, she frowned a little, earnestly and courteously, as befitted such a refined and intelligent queen. She was clearly born to sit on a throne, and although she came from a foreign land, she reigned over Spain as a loyal Spaniard, just as her sister-in-law, Ana de Austria—sister of our Philip IV and wife of Louis XIII—reigned as a loyal Frenchwoman in her
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