Silence. Keeping his finger on the trigger of the pistol, the captain took a long look around. Gualterio Malatesta’s lodgings reminded him too much of his own for him to be totally indifferent. And in a certain way, the Italian was right. They were not all that far apart.
“Is it true that you cannot move out of that bed?”
“By my faith, no.” Malatesta was now looking at him with renewed attention. “What is it? Are you looking for an excuse?” Again the white, cruel smile grew wider. “If it helps, I can tell you of the men I have dispatched posthaste, without giving them time for a ‘God help me.’ Awake, asleep, from the front, from the back—and more of the second than the first. So don’t come to me now with a crisis of conscience.” The smile gave way to a quiet little laugh, discordant, evil. “You and I are professionals.”
Alatriste looked at his enemy’s sword. The guard had as many nicks and dents as his own. Everything comes down to how the dice fall, he told himself.
“I would be grateful,” Alatriste suggested, “if you would try to grab the pistol, or that sword.”
Malatesta stared at him, hard, before slowly shaking his head no.
“Not a chance. I may lie here filleted, but I am no coward. If you want to kill me, press that trigger and it will be over. With luck, I will reach hell in time for dinner.”
“I do not like the role of executioner.”
“Then shove it up your ass. I am too weak to argue.”
He lay his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes, whistling his ti-ri-tu, ta-ta, as if the matter had been settled. Alatriste stood with his pistol in hand, as through the window came the distant tolling of church bells.
Finally, Malatesta stopped whistling. He ran his hand over his swollen eyebrows, then across his pocked and scarred face, and again looked at the captain.
“Well? What have you decided?”
Alatriste did not answer. The situation verged on the grotesque. Not even Lope would have dared put such a scene in a play, for fear that the cobbler Tabarca’s mosqueteros—those toughest critics—would stomp their feet in disapproval. He walked a little closer to the bed, studying his enemy’s wounds. They stank, and looked very bad.
“Oh, but make no mistake,” said Malatesta, believing he knew what Alatriste was thinking. “I will come out of this. We men from Palermo are tough. So just get it over with.”
Diego Alatriste wanted to dispatch the dangerous swine, who had been such a menace in his life and that of his friends. Leaving him alive was as suicidal as keeping a venomous serpent in the room where he planned to sleep. He wanted and he needed to kill Gualterio Malatesta. Not this way, however, but with steel in their hands, face to face, hearing the gasping and grunts of the fight, and the death rattle at the end.
Thinking it over, he reflected that there was really no hurry. After all, however much the Italian insisted, the two of them were not the same. Perhaps they were in God’s eyes, or the Devil’s, or man’s, but not deep inside, not in their consciences. They were equals in everything except the way they read the dice on the table. Equals, except that if the roles were reversed, Malatesta would have killed Diego Alatriste long before this, while the captain stood there with his sword sheathed, the finger on the trigger of his pistol indecisive.
The door opened, and a woman appeared on the threshold. She was still young, dressed in a blouse and dirty gray petticoats. She was carrying a basket of clean sheets and a demijohn of wine, and when she saw an intruder there she choked back a scream, sending a frightened look to Malatesta. The demijohn fell to the floor, bursting inside the woven wicker covering. She was too frightened to move or speak, and anguish filled her eyes. With one glance, Diego Alatriste knew that her fear was not for herself but for the fate of the badly wounded man on the bed. After all, the captain thought, ridiculing himself as he did, even serpents seek companionship.
He looked the woman over, taking his time. She was a spindly thing, common looking. Her youth was wearing thin, and only a certain class of life could have imposed the circles of fatigue beneath her eyes. Pardiez. She reminded him a little of Caridad la Lebrijana.
The captain looked at the broken demijohn, at the wine spreading like blood across the floor tiles. Then he bowed his head, carefully released the hammer of the pistol, and placed it in his belt. He did everything very slowly, as if he feared he might forget something, or as if he were thinking of something else. And then, without a word or a backward glance, he moved the woman gently aside and left the room stinking of loneliness and defeat. A room too like his own, like all the places he had known throughout a lifetime.
As soon as he was out on the gallery, he began to laugh, and he kept laughing as he went down the stairs to the street, fastening his cape. He laughed as Malatesta had laughed once near the royal castle, in the rain, when he came to tell me good-bye after the adventure of the two Englishmen.
His laugh, like the Italian’s, echoed long after he had gone.
EPILOGUE
It seems that war is flaring up again in Flanders, and that most of the officers and soldiers in Madrid have decided to leave and join their tercios, seeing what little action there is here and what opportunity there is there for booty and benefits. It has been four days since the Tercio Viejo de Cartagena left with its drums and banners. It was, as you, my reader, undoubtedly know, reformed after the loss of lives suffered two years ago that terrible day in Fleurus. Nearly the entire company are veteran soldiers, and great news is expected from the rebellious provinces.
On a different subject, yesterday, Monday, the chaplain of Las Adoratrices Benitas, Padre Juan Coroado, was killed in a mysterious manner. This priest came from a well-known Portuguese family. He was young, handsome in his person and eloquent in the pulpit. It seems he was standing at the gate of his parish church when a young masked man approached and without speaking a word ran him through with one thrust. There are whispers of women, or vengeance. The killer has not been found.
—from José Pellicer’s weekly bulletin to friends
FROM LICENCIADO SALVADOR CORTES Y CAMPOAMOR
To Captain Alatriste
The bards, throughout the ages, have conveyed
Your story, from Homer on, your praises they declare,
And still today antagonists despair
When they recall the fury of your blade.
Breda, Ostend, Maastricht, Antwerp as well,
Were theaters for your exploits, each heroic deed,
Where, sword flashing, you were always in the lead
To serve the King, and his enemy repel.
Lutherans, contentious French, insurgent Flemish,
Dread Turks, Dutchmen, the ever-present English,
All served to help you win your well-earned fame,
Then let the heavens and the earth proclaim
The much-sung feats of a true warrior:
Alatriste! The thunderbolt of war!
FROM THE CONDE DE GUADALMEDINA
To a Certain Priest Petitioner Much Admired at Court
Lascivious Padre, salacious, and promiscuous,
Would it not serve you better to be religious?
Should there not be one honest woman
To whom you have not promised heaven
Through the attention of your pillicock?
Must you skewer every ewe among your flock?
That sacred staff of yours, your treasure,
You must find raw, abraded beyond measure
From its constant state of excitation
And unrelenting quest of penetration.
Yea, for every virgin you confess
There is another cunny to be blessed.
FROM THE BENEFICIADO VILLASECA
In Faint Praise of the Head Constable, Martín Saldaña
Señor Saldaña, by my faith,
You amble at an ox’s pace
When you are summoned to untangle
Some imminently mortal wrangle.
Why then should I be amazed
/>
—Given you’re forever dazed—
That meeting with your deputies
May take a few eternities?
Poor ox, his wife doth dally ’round
And Saldaña’s head with antlers crown.
But in the end, if I’m not daft,
And precedent reliable,
An ox become a constable
Will wear the horns and get the shaft.
ATTRIBUTED TO DON FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO
He Ponders That in Youth’s Exuberance There Is Need for Providence
Happy, he scales the towering obelisk,
This lad who puts his trust in youthful fire,
Weighing challenge against his heart’s desire,
And pitting courage against the gravest risk.
All too rashly, he lifts his wings in flight.
And, a new Icarus, soars near
But does not reach the blazing sphere
That radiates life’s daring from the height.
Patrician brio cannot be denied.
Spurred by the ardent blood of youth
The noble spirit ever seeks the prize.
But in this fall to earth may lie a truth.
The prudent voice will serve as surest guide:
The hero is not the valiant, but the wise.
BY DON FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO
Abiding Love, Beyond Death
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.
That darkness, though, will not leave memory
On that far shore where once it brightly blazed,
Instead, my flame will burn through icy waves
To flout the laws of death’s finality.
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.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Purity of Blood
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