The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet

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Diego Alatriste was in a devil of a hurry. A new play was about to be performed at the Corral de la Cruz, and there he was on the Cuesta de la Vega, dueling with some fellow whose name he didn’t even know. The play was by Tirso de Molina, and any first performance of a play by Tirso was a great occasion in Madrid. The whole city, it seemed, was either crammed into the theater or else forming a queue outside in the street, and no one in that queue would have thought it unreasonable to knife his neighbor if it meant getting a seat or even standing room. There was, however, neither rhyme nor reason to what he was doing now, namely, getting involved in a minor skirmish following a chance collision on a street corner. Such conflicts were, of course, a regular enough occurrence in the Madrid of the day, where it was as common to unsheathe one’s sword as to cross oneself. “Why don’t you look where you’re going, sir!” “Why don’t you, my man—are you blind?” “God’s teeth.” “God’s and anyone else’s.” And it was that disrespectful “my man”—for the other fellow was young and quick to anger—which had made a fight inevitable. “You, sir,” Alatriste had said, stroking his mustache, “can call me ‘my man’ or even ‘boy’ all you like, but only with sword and dagger in hand on the Cuesta de la Vega, which is, after all, just a step away—always assuming, of course, that you’re gentleman enough to spare me the time.” The other man did apparently have time to spare, or was, at the least, unprepared to modify his language.

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