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hospital where the great Valencian poet and captain Guillén de Castro, author of The Youth of El Cid , would die five years later, so poor that he was buried in a pauper’s grave. And speaking of poverty, I will just remind you that that most honest of men, unhappy don Miguel de Cervantes—whose modest wish to be sent to the Indies, citing the fact that he had lost an arm in the Battle of Lepanto and been a slave in Algeria, was refused—had died ten years before the events I am now relating, in the sixteenth year of the century, penniless and abandoned by almost everyone he knew. Alone and without ceremony, he was borne to his grave in Las Trinitarias along those same streets—with no public report of his exequies—and then promptly forgotten by his contemporaries. Only much later, when other countries were already eagerly devouring and reprinting translations of his novel Don Quixote , did we wretched Spaniards begin to lay claim to him, a fate which, with very few exceptions, we have always meted out to our finest sons.
     
     
     
     
    We found don Francisco de Quevedo polishing off a pasty as he sat outside a cheap restaurant called El León, which was next to the tobacconist’s, where Calle Cantarranas and the mentidero meet. He called for another pitcher of Valdeiglesias, two mugs, and two more pasties, while we drew up a couple of stools and joined him at his table. He was, as usual, dressed entirely in black, apart from the red cross of Santiago embroidered on his tunic; his neatly folded cloak lay on the bench beside him, along with his sword. He had come from an early appointment at the palace, where he was trying to resolve the seemingly interminable wrangle over who owned the fiefdom of Torre de Juan Abad, and was taking the edge off his appetite before returning home to correct the new edition of his book, God’s Politics, Christ’s Government , on which he was engaged at the time in an effort to stave off criticism from the Inquisition. Our presence, he said, suited him perfectly, as a way of keeping away undesirables; for now that his star was on the rise at court—he had, as I mentioned earlier, formed part of the royal entourage on the recent journey to Aragon and Catalonia—he was constantly being pestered by people hoping for some kind of favor.
    “What’s more,” he said, “I’ve been asked to write a play to be performed at El Escorial at the end of the month. His Catholic Majesty will be there on a hunting trip and requires some form of entertainment.”
    “Plays are not exactly your specialty,” remarked Alatriste.
    “Hell’s teeth, if even poor old Cervantes could have a go at playwrighting, I reckon I can, too. Besides, it was the count-duke himself who asked me. So from now on, you may consider plays to be my specialty.”
    “And is he actually going to pay you, or will he, as usual, set it against future favors?”
    Quevedo gave a wry laugh.
    “As to the future, I have no idea,” he said with a stoical sigh. “Yesterday is gone, the morrow has not yet come . . . But for the present, it’s six hundred reales , or will be. At least that’s what Olivares has promised me. As the poet says:
    Ah, see what I have stooped to,
Obliged by his high station,
I to my painful duty,
While he cries inflation.
    “We’ll see,” he went on. “The count-duke wants a play full of intrigue, which, as you know, is the kind of play the king likes best. And so, I’ll lock up Aristotle and Horace, Seneca and even Terence, and then, as Lope says, I’ll write a few hundred lines in the vulgar tongue, just foolish enough to please him.”
    “Have you thought of a plot yet?”
    “Of course. Love affairs, secret meetings, misunderstandings, sword fights . . . the usual thing. I’ll call it The Sword and the Dagger .” Quevedo gave the captain a seemingly casual glance over his mug of wine. “And they want Cózar to put it on.”
    At that moment, there was a scuffle on the corner of Calle