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Francos. People rushed over to see what was happening, and we, too, looked in that direction. Afterward, various people walked past us, commenting on the incident: a lackey of the Marquis de las Navas had apparently knifed a coachman because he had declined to give way to him. The murderer had taken refuge in the church of San Sebastián, and the coachman, on the point of death, had been carried into a nearby house.
    “As for the coachman,” declared Quevedo, “he deserved to die for belonging to such a wretched profession.”
    Then he looked again at my master and returned to the matter in hand.
    “Yes, Cózar,” he said.
    The captain sat impassively, watching the ebb and flow of people on the mentidero . He said nothing. The sun accentuated the greenish light in his eyes.
    “They say,” added Quevedo after a pause, “that our ardent monarch is laying siege to La Castro. Would you know anything about that?”
    “Why would I?” asked Alatriste, chewing on a piece of pasty.
    Don Francisco drank down his wine and said nothing more. The friendship they professed for each other excluded both giving advice and interfering in each other’s affairs. A long silence ensued. The captain was still turned toward the street, his face expressionless; and I, after exchanging a worried look with the poet, did the same. Idlers stood around in groups, chatting or else strolling about and ogling the women as if trying to divine what delights their cloaks might conceal. At the entrance to his shop, the cobbler Taburca, still wearing his leather apron and holding a hammer, was holding forth to his stalwarts on the merits, or otherwise, of the previous day’s play. A woman selling lemons passed by, her basket over her arm (“Fresh and tart as you like,” was her cry), and became the object of lewd compliments from two students in cap and gown who were munching lupine seeds as they walked along, bundles of verses stuffed in their pockets, both clearly on the lookout for someone with whom they could exchange some banter. Then I noticed a dark, scrawny individual, with the bearded face of a Turk; he was standing in a nearby doorway, watching us as he cleaned the dirt from under his fingernails with a knife. He had no cloak on, but he carried a dagger, a long sword in a baldric, and wore a much-darned, tow-stuffed doublet, the floppy, broad-brimmed hat of a ruffian, and a large gold earring dangling from one earlobe. I was about to study him more carefully when someone came up behind me, casting a shadow over the table. Greetings were exchanged, and don Francisco rose to his feet.
    “I don’t know if you two have met before. Diego Alatriste, this is Pedro Calderón de la Barca.”
    The captain and I both stood up to greet the new arrival, whom I had seen occasionally at the Corral de la Cruz. I immediately recognized the downy mustache and the pleasant, slender face. He wasn’t grimy with sweat and soot this time, nor was he wearing a buffcoat; he had on elegant city clothes, a fine cape and a hat with an embroidered hatband, and the sword he wore at his belt was clearly not that of a soldier. Nevertheless, he wore the same smile as he had at the sacking of Oudkerk.
    “The boy’s name,” added Quevedo, “is Íñigo Balboa.”
    Pedro Calderón looked at me for a while, as if trying to place me.
    “A comrade from Flanders, I believe,” he said at last. “Isn’t that right?”
    His smile grew broader, and he placed a friendly hand on my shoulder. I felt like the luckiest young man in the world and savored the astonished look on the faces of Quevedo and my master. Calderón was claimed by some as the heir to Tirso and to Lope, and his star was beginning to shine brightly in the theaters and at the palace.
    His play The Mock Astrologer had been performed with great success the previous year, and he was, at the time, putting the finishing touches to The Siege at Breda . No wonder, then, that don Francisco and my master were so