“A pity,” murmured don Francisco, “I did not arrive in time to save her as well.”
He nodded toward the nearest pyre, and seemed shamed by Elvira de la Cruz’s fate. Not in regard to himself, or the captain, but by everything that had led the poor girl to this point, destroying her family along with her. Shamed, perhaps, by the land in which he had been fated to live: vengeful, cruel, dazzling in its sterile grandeur but indolent and vicious in everyday life. Quevedo’s honesty and stoic, sincerely Christian, Seneca-inspired resignation were not enough to console him. It seemed that to be lucid and Spanish would forever be coupled with great bitterness and little hope.
“At any rate,” Quevedo concluded, “it was the will of God.”
Diego Alatriste did not immediately reply. God’s will or the Devil’s, he remained silent, eyes on the fires and the black outlines of the constables and masses of people silhouetted against the ominous backdrop of the flames. He had not yet come to see me on Calle del Arcabuz, though Quevedo, and then Martín Saldaña, whom they had scouted out earlier in the day, had told him that there was nothing to fear. Everything seemed to have been resolved with such discretion that not even the death of the swordsman in the alley had come to light, nor did anyone have news of the injured Gualterio Malatesta. So, as soon as his wound had been bandaged in Tuerto Fadrique’s apothecary, Alatriste had gone with Quevedo to the burning at the Puerta de Alcalá. And there he stayed, along with the poet, until Elvira was nothing but bone and ash in the coals of her pyre.
For one moment the captain thought he sighted Jerónimo de la Cruz among the throng, or at least the ghostly shade the elder brother seemed to have become, the one survivor of the slaughtered family. But darkness and the milling crowd had closed back over his muffled face—if it had in fact been him at all.
“No,” Alatriste said finally.
He had taken so long to speak that don Francisco was not expecting to hear anything, and he looked at him with surprise, trying to think what he was referring to. But the captain, expressionless, continued to observe the fires. Only later, after a second long pause, did he slowly turn toward Quevedo and say, “God had no part in this.”
Unlike the poet’s eyeglasses, Alatriste’s gray-green eyes did not reflect the light of the bonfires; they were more reminiscent of two pools of frozen water. The last of the flames shed dancing shadows and red hues on his knife-sharp profile.
I was feigning sleep. Caridad la Lebrijana was sitting by the head of the bed, where she had tucked me in after supper and a warm bath in a large tub brought from the tavern. She was watching over me while, by candlelight, she mended some of the captain’s linen. Eyes closed, I was enjoying the warmth of the bed, in a delicious half-sleep that also allowed me to keep from answering questions or having to say anything about my recent adventure. The mere thought of it—I could not get the infamous sanbenito out of my mind—still ate into me like acid. The warmth of the sheets, the kind company of La Lebrijana, the knowledge that I was among friends, and especially the prospect of lying there in the quiet, eyes closed, as the world outside whirled on with no thought of me, had lulled me into a lethargy resembling happiness, compounded by the thought that during my imprisonment no one had torn a word from me that would incriminate Diego Alatriste.
I did not open my eyes when I heard steps on the stairway, or when La Lebrijana, swallowing an exclamation, threw her mending to the floor and herself into the captain’s arms. I lay listening to the quiet murmur of conversation, several resounding kisses from the tavern keeper, the new arrival’s mutter of protest, and footsteps receding down the stairs. I thought I was alone until after a long silence I again heard the captain’s boots, this time approaching the bed, and stopping there.
I nearly opened my eyes, but did not. I knew that he had seen me in the plaza, humiliated among the penitents. And I had not been able to forget that because I had disobeyed his orders, I had let myself be trapped like a linnet the night we attacked the convent of the Adoratrices Benitas. In short, I still did not find myself strong enough to confront his questions or his reproaches. Not even the silence of his gaze. So I lay motionless, breathing evenly to feign sleep.
There was an endless time during which nothing happened. No doubt he was watching me in the light of the candle La Lebrijana had left by the bed. Not a sound, not his breathing, nothing at all. And then, when I was beginning to doubt that he actually was there, I felt the touch of his hand, the rough palm that he laid for a moment on my forehead, with a warmth and unexpected tenderness. He held it there a moment and then brusquely pulled away. I heard the steps again, and the sound of the cupboard being opened, the clink of a glass and a jug of wine, and the scraping of a chair being moved.
Cautiously, I opened my eyes. In the dim light of the room I saw that the captain had unfastened his doublet and unbuckled his sword. Seated by the table, he was drinking in silence. The wine gurgled again and again as it was poured into the glass. He drank slowly, methodically, as if he had nothing else in the world to do. The yellowish candlelight illuminated the light blotch of his shirt, the plane of his face, his short-trimmed hair, the tip of his thick soldier’s mustache. He was silent, not moving except to drink. Behind him was the window he had opened, and I could see vague outlines of nearby rooftops and chimneys. Over them shone a single star, still, silent, cold. Alatriste stared fixedly into the void, or at his own ghosts wandering in the darkness. I knew his eyes when the wine clouded them, and I could guess how they looked at that moment: glaucous, absent. At his waist, blood was slowly soaking the bandage on his hip, staining his white shirt with red.
He seemed as resigned and alone as the star winking outside in the night.
Two days later, sun was shining on Calle de Toledo, and again the world was wide and filled with hope, and the vigor of youth was leaping in my veins. Sitting at the door of the Tavern of the Turk, practicing my penmanship with the writing materials Licenciado Calzas kept bringing me from La Provincia plaza, I was again seeing life with that optimism and that speedy recovery following misfortune that only good health and youth can give. From time to time I looked over toward the women selling vegetables in the stands across the street, the hens pecking scraps, and the ragamuffins running around among the horses and coaches, as I listened to the sound of conversations inside the tavern. I considered myself the most contented boy in the world. Even the verses I was copying seemed to me the most beautiful ever written.
The shadow that comes to end day’s reverie
Will bring the dark, and close my eyelids fast,
Enabling this soul of mine, at last,
To slough off anguish and anxiety.
The words were don Francisco de Quevedo’s, and they had seemed so lovely when I heard him casually reciting them between sips of San Martín de Valdeiglesias, that I had asked his permission to write them out in my best hand. Don Francisco was inside with the captain and the others—the licenciado, Dómine Pérez, Juan Vicuña, and the Tuerto Fadrique—all of them celebrating with carafes of the finest, sausages and cured hares, the happy end to a bad situation, which no one mentioned explicitly but all had very much in mind. One after another they had ruffled my hair or given me an affectionate pinch on the cheek as they arrived at the tavern. Don Francisco brought me a copy of Plutarch so that I could practice my reading. The dómine brought a silver rosary, Juan Vicuña came with a bronze belt buckle he had worn in Flanders, and the Tuerto Fadrique—who was the pinchpenny of the brotherhood and little inclined to part with his money—brought an ounce of a compound from his pharmacy that he assured me was perfect for building up the blood and restoring color to a lad like myself, who had suffered so many recent travails. I was the most honored, and the happiest, boy in all the Spains, as I dipped one of Licenciado Calzas’s good goose quills into the inkwell, and continued:
That darkness, though, will not leave memory
On that far shore where once it brightly blazed,
Instead, my flame will b
urn through icy waves
To flout the laws of death’s finality.
It was at that verse when, as I looked up again, my hand stopped in midair and a drop of ink fell onto my page like a tear. Up Calle de Toledo came a very familiar black coach, one with no escutcheon on the door and a stern coachman driving the two mules. Slowly, as if in a dream, I set aside paper, pen, ink, and drying sand, and stood rooted as if the carriage were an apparition that any wrong movement on my part might dispel. As the coach pulled up to where I stood, I saw the little window, which was open, with the curtains unfastened. First I saw a perfect white hand, and then the blond curls and the sky-blue eyes that Diego Velázquez later painted: the girl who had led me to within a breath of the gallows. And as the carriage rolled past the Tavern of the Turk, Angélica de Alquézar looked straight at me, in a way—I swear by all that is holy—that sent a chill from the tip of my spine to my bewitched and furiously pounding heart. On an impulse, without considering what I was doing, I placed my hand on my chest, honestly and truly lamenting that I was not wearing the gold chain with the amulet that she had given me to ensure a sentence of death, and which, had the Holy Office not taken it from me, I swear by Christ’s blood I would have continued to wear around my neck with besotted pride.
Angélica understood the gesture. Her smile, that diabolic expression I so adored, lighted her lips. And then with a fingertip, she brushed them in something very like a kiss. And Calle de Toledo, and Madrid—the entire sphere—vibrated with a delicious harmony that made me feel jubilantly alive.
I stood watching, still as stone, long after the carriage disappeared up the street. Then, choosing a new quill, I smoothed the point against my doublet and finished putting down don Francisco’s sonnet.
Soul, in which a godhead was enclosed,
Veins, through which a humor’s fire arose,
Marrow, the seat of earthly passion’s reign,
Will fly the body, but quiddity retain;
Though ash, they will have sensibility,
Be dust enamored through eternity.
It was growing dark, but not yet dark enough for a lantern. The Posada Lansquenete was situated on a filthy, stinking street derisively called Calle de la Primavera—though there was no perfume of springtime there! It was near the Lavapiés fountain, the location of the lowest taverns and wine cellars in Madrid, as well as of its most ruinous brothels. Clothes were drying on lines strung from one side of the street to the other, and through open windows came the noise of quarrels and crying babies. Horse droppings were piled at the entrance to the inn, and Diego Alatriste took care not to soil his boots when he went into the corral-like courtyard where a broken-down cart with no wheels, only bare axles, was set up on stones. After a quick glance around, he took the stairs, and after thirty or so steps, and after four or five cats had darted between his legs, he reached the top floor without challenge.
Once there, he studied the doors along the gallery. If Martín Saldaña’s information was correct, it was the last door on the right, just at the corner of the corridor. He walked in that direction, trying not to make any noise and at the same time gathering up the cape that concealed his buffcoat and pistol. Doves were cooing in the eaves, the only audible sound in that part of the house. From the floor below rose the aroma of a stew. A serving girl was humming something in the distance. Alatriste stopped, glanced around for a possible escape route, assured himself that his sword and dagger were where they should be, then pulled his pistol from his belt and, after testing the primer, thumbed back the hammer. The moment had come to settle unfinished business. He smoothed his mustache, unfastened his cape, and opened the door.
It was a miserable room that smelled of confinement, of loneliness. Some early-rising cockroaches were scurrying across the table among the remains of a meal, like looters after a battle. There were two empty bottles, a water jug, and chipped glasses. Dirty clothes were slung over a chair, a urinal sat in the middle of the floor, a black doublet, hat, and cape hung on the wall. There was one bed, with a sword at its head. And in the bed was Gualterio Malatesta.
A certainty: If the Italian had made the least move of surprise, or of menace, Alatriste would have without so much as a “Defend yourself!” fired the pistol he held at point-blank range. Instead, Malatesta lay staring at the door as if he were struggling to recognize who had come in, and his right hand did not make a twitch in the direction of the pistol lying ready on the sheets. He was propped up on a pillow, and a face that could strike terror on its own was made even more frightening by pain, a three days’ beard, a badly closed, inflamed wound above his eyebrows, a filthy poultice covering a nasty cut below his left cheekbone, and an ashen pallor. Bandages crusted with dried blood wound around his naked torso, and from the dark stains seeping through them, Alatriste counted a minimum of three wounds. It seemed clear that the assassin had got the worst of the recent skirmish in the alley.
With his pistol still pointed at Malatesta, the captain closed the door behind him and approached the bed. The Italian seemed to have recognized him at last, for the glitter of his eyes, exacerbated by fever, had turned harder, and his hand made a weak attempt to reach for the pistol. He had obviously lost a lot of blood. Alatriste held the barrel of his weapon two inches from the Italian’s head, but his enemy was too debilitated to defend himself.
After acknowledging the futility of trying, he simply lifted his head a little off the pillow. Beneath the Italian mustache, now in need of care, appeared the white flash of the dangerous smile the captain, to his misfortune, knew well. Fatigued it is true—and twisted in a grimace of pain—but it was the unmistakable smile with which Gualterio Malatesta seemed always prepared to live or else depart for the lower regions.
“Forsooth!” he murmured. “If it is not Captain Alatriste.”
His voice was muffled and weak in tone, though firm in words. The black, febrile eyes were fixed on the visitor, ignoring the barrel of the gun pointed at him.
“It appears,” the Italian continued, “that you are performing your charitable works by visiting the ill.” He laughed to himself.
For a moment the captain held his glance and then lowered the pistol, though he kept his finger on the trigger. “I am a good Catholic,” he replied mockingly.
Malatesta’s short dry laugh intensified when he heard that, ending in a fit of coughing. “I have heard that.” He nodded, when he had recovered. “Yes, that is what they say. Although in recent days there have been some yeas and nays on the subject.”
He still held the captain’s eyes, but then, with the hand that had not been capable of picking up the pistol, he motioned toward the jug on the table.
“If it is not too much, would you set that water a little closer? Then you could boast that you had also given drink to the thirsty.”
Alatriste considered for a moment, then picked up the jug and brought it to the bed, never taking his eyes from his enemy. Malatesta drank two avid gulps, observing the captain over the rim of the jug.
“Have you come to kill me straight off,” he inquired, “or do you hope that first I will spill out the details of your most recent venture?”
He had set the jar to one side, and weakly swiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His smile was the smile of a cornered snake: dangerous to the last hiss.
“I have no need for you to tell me anything.” Alatriste shrugged. “It is all very clear: the trap at the convent, Luis de Alquézar, the Inquisition. Everything.”
“The Devil. You have simply come to kill me, then.”
“That is so.”
Malatesta studied the situation. He did not seem to find it promising.
“And the fact that I have nothing new to tell you,” he concluded, “only shortens my life.”
“More or less.” Now it was the captain who flashed a hard, dangerous smile. “Although I shall do you the honor of assuming that you are not a man to spill your guts,” he said, with some irony.
Malatesta sighed, shi
fting painfully as he felt his bandages.
“Very chivalrous on your part.” Resigned, he pointed to the sword at the head of his bed. “A pity that I am not well enough to return your courtesy and save you having to kill me in my bed like a dog. But you trimmed my candle quite thoroughly the other day in that accursed alley.”
He moved again, attempting to find a more comfortable position. At that moment he did not seem to hold more rancor than was required by their profession. But his dark, feverish eyes were alert, watching Alatriste.
“You truly did…I hear that the boy’s skin was saved. Is that true?”
“It is.”
The assassin’s smile widened.
“That pleases me, by God. He is a brave lad. You should have seen him that night at the convent, trying to hold me at bay with a dagger. Hang me if I enjoyed taking him to Toledo, and less, knowing what awaited him. But you know how it goes. He who pays, commands.”
His smile had become mocking. Once or twice he looked out of the corner of his eye at his pistol, lying on the sheets. The captain had no doubt that he would use it if the opportunity arose.
“You,” said Alatriste, “are a whoreson and a viper.”
Malatesta looked at him with what seemed to be sincere surprise.
“Pardiez, Captain Alatriste. Anyone who heard you would take you for a Clarist nun.”