Purity of Blood (14 page)

“How much time do we have left?”

“Very little. According to my information, they are speeding up the particulars of the trial, and it may be the Plaza Mayor within a couple of weeks. Considering the current state of my relationship with the Holy Office, that would be a feather in their caps.” He shook his powerful head nested in the starched collar encircling a ruddy neck. “They have not forgiven me the business of the Genoese.”

A slight, melancholy smile appeared between the dark beard on his chin and the fierce mustache, and he lifted his enormous hand to indicate the interview closed. Guadalmedina again bowed slightly, enough to be polite without compromising his honor.

“You have been very generous with your time. We are deeply grateful, and indebted to Your Lordship.”

“You may expect a bill, don Álvaro. My Lordship never does anything gratis.” The favorite turned toward don Francisco, who was playing the part of the stone guest in Tirso’s
The Trickster of Seville.
“As for you, Señor de Quevedo, it is my hope that our relations may improve. A sonnet or two praising my policy in Flanders would not go unappreciated, one of those anonymous broadsheets that everyone knows are written by you. And a timely poem on the need to reduce by half the value of the
vellón
coin. Something in the vein of those verses you had the kindness to devote to me the other day:

“May the courtly star that disposes you

to the King’s favor, without intent or vengeance,

a miracle that curtails envy’s diligence…”

An uncomfortable don Francisco shot an oblique glance toward his companions. Following his long and painful exile from favor—which he had good signs of at last regaining—the poet hoped to recover his cachet at court, emerging from all his lawsuits and reversals of fortune. The events of the convent of Las Benitas came at an inopportune moment for him, and the fact that for an old debt of honor and friendship he would place his present good star in danger said a great deal for his character. Loathed and feared for his acerbic pen and his extraordinary wit, Quevedo had in recent days attempted not to appear hostile to the powers that be, and that had led him to intersperse his accustomed pessimistic vision and outbursts of bad humor with praise. Human after all, little inclined to return to exile, and hoping to shore up his waning estate, the great satirist was endeavoring to curb his pen, for fear of losing everything. Furthermore, he still sincerely believed, as many did, that Olivares could be the ironfisted surgeon needed to cure the aged and sickly Spanish lion.

It must be said, however, in defense of Alatriste’s friend that, even during the times of his bonanza, Quevedo had written a play entitled
What Should the Favorite Be Like,
which did not argue well for the future Conde-Duque’s influence at court. And despite the attempts of Olivares and other powers at court to attract the poet, that tenuous friendship burst apart some years later. Tittle-tattle had it that the king was irritated by a satiric poem he found beneath his napkin, although I think it was something of greater substance that turned them into mortal enemies, awakened the wrath of our lord and king, and was the cause of an old and ill Quevedo’s being imprisoned in San Marcos de León.

That happened later, when the monarchy had become an insatiable machine for devouring taxes, while a drained populace received nothing in exchange but the political blunders and the disasters of war. Catalonia and Portugal rebelled, the French—as usual—wanted to slice off their share, and Spain plunged into civil war, ruin, and shame. But I will refer to such somber times at the proper moment. What I wish to relate now is that that evening in the Prado, the poet gave an austere but accommodating and nearly courtly reply.

“I shall consult the Muses, Excellency. And do what can be done.”

Olivares nodded, already satisfied. “I have no doubt you will.” His tone was that of someone who does not remotely consider a different possibility. “As for your suit for the eight thousand four hundred
reales
owed by the Duque de Osuna, you know that things at the palace go slowly. All in good time. Come by to see me some day and we will have a leisurely chat. And do not forget my poem.”

Quevedo nodded, not without a second slightly embarrassed glance toward his companions. He particularly studied Guadalmedina, searching for a sign of mockery, but Álvaro de la Marca was an experienced courtier; he knew the sword-sharp gifts of the satirist, and his face showed only the prudent expression of someone who has heard nothing. The favorite turned to Diego Alatriste.

“As for you, Señor Captain, I regret that I cannot help you.” His tone, although again distant as befitted their relative positions, was amiable. “I confess that for some strange reason, which perhaps both you and I recognize, I have a certain fondness for your person…. That, in addition to the request from my dear friend don Álvaro, caused me to grant you this meeting. But you are aware that the more power one obtains, the more limited is the opportunity to exercise it.”

Alatriste held his hat in one hand and rested the other on the pommel of his sword. “With all respect, Your Excellency, one word from you can save that lad.”

“I suppose that is true. In fact, an order signed by my hand would be enough. But it is not that easy. That would place me in the position of having to make concessions in return. And in my office, concessions can be made only rarely. Your young friend weighs very little on the scales in relation to other serious burdens that God and our king have placed in my hands. So I have no choice but to wish you good fortune.”

He concluded with an expression that boded no appeal; the matter was sealed. But Alatriste held his eyes without blinking.

“Excellency. I have nothing but the sword I live by and my record of service, which means nothing to anyone.” The captain spoke very slowly, as if thinking aloud more than addressing the first minister of two worlds. “Neither am I a man of many words or resources. But they are going to burn an innocent lad whose father, my comrade, died fighting in those wars that are as much the king’s as they are yours. Perhaps I, and Lope Balboa, and Balboa’s son, do not tip the scale that Your Excellency so rightly mentioned. Yet one never knows what twists and turns life will take, nor whether one day the full reach of a good blade will not be more beneficial than all the papers and all the notaries and all the royal seals in the world. If you help the orphan of one of your soldiers, I give you my word that on such a day you can count on me.”

Neither Quevedo nor Guadalmedina—no one—had ever heard Diego Alatriste utter so many words at one time. And the king’s favorite listened, inscrutable, motionless, with only an attentive gleam in his astute dark eyes. The captain had spoken with melancholy respect, but with a firmness that might have seemed brusque had it not been made amenable by his serene gaze and calm tone, totally devoid of arrogance. He seemed merely to have enunciated objective fact.

“I do not know whether it will be five, six, even ten days, months, or years hence,” the captain persisted. “But you can count on me.”

There was a long silence. Olivares, who had begun to close the coach door, concluding the interview, paused. Beneath his terrible mustache, Alatriste and his companions glimpsed something resembling a smile.

“’Sblood!” he said.

The favorite stared for what seemed an eternity. And then, very slowly, after removing a sheet of paper from a portfolio lined with Moroccan leather, he took a lead pencil and wrote four words:
Alquézar. Huesca. Green Book.
Pensively, he reread several times what he’d written. Finally, slowly, as if doubting what he was about to do until the last moment, he handed it to Diego Alatriste.

“You are absolutely right, Captain,” he murmured, still thoughtful, before glancing toward the sword Alatriste wore on his left side. “In truth, one never knows.”

VIII. A NOCTURNAL VISIT

The bells at San Jerónimo pealed twice as Diego Alatriste slowly turned the key. His initial apprehension turned to relief when the lock, oiled from inside that very evening, turned with a soft click.

He pushed the door, opening it in the darkness without the least squeak from its hinges.
Auro clausa patent.
With gold, doors open, Dómine Pérez would have said; and don Francisco de Quevedo had referred to don Dinero as a “powerful caballero.” In truth, that the gold was from the pouch of the Conde de Guadalmedina and not from the thin purse of Captain Alatriste mattered not at all. No one cared about name, origin, or smell. The gold had bought the keys and the plan of the house, and thanks to it, someone was going to receive a disagreeable surprise.

Alatriste had bid don Francisco good-bye a couple of hours earlier, when he accompanied the poet to Calle de las Postas and watched him gallop away on a good horse, carrying traveling clothes, sword, portmanteau, a pistol in his saddletree, and, tucked in the band of his hat, those four words the Conde de Olivares had confided to them.

Guadalmedina, who had approved the poet’s journey, had not shown the same enthusiasm for the adventure Alatriste was preparing to undertake that very night. Better to wait, he had said. But the captain could not wait. Quevedo’s assignment was a shot in the dark. He had to do something in the meantime.

He unsheathed his dagger and, holding it in his left hand, crossed the patio, trying not to bump into anything in the dark and wake the servants. At least one of them—the one who had provided the keys and the plan to Álvaro de la Marca’s agents—would sleep deaf, mute, and blind that night, but there were a half-dozen more who might take to heart his having disturbed their sleep at such hours. The captain had taken the appropriate precautions. He was wearing dark clothing, without a cape or hat to get in his way. In his belt was one of his flintlock pistols, well oiled and ready to fire, along with his sword and dagger. Finally he had added the old buffcoat that had offered such venerable service in a Madrid to which Alatriste himself had contributed, not a little, to making insalubrious. As for boots, they had been left in Juan Vicuña’s little hideaway. In their stead the captain was wearing a pair of leather sandals with woven grass soles, very useful for moving with the speed and silence of a shadow. The sandals were a lesson learned in times even more deadly than these, when a man had to slip between fascine battlements and trenches to slit the throats of Flemish heretics during cruel night raids in which no quarter was given or expected.

The house was still and dark. Alatriste bumped against the rim of a cistern, felt his way around it, and finally found the door he was seeking. The second key worked to his satisfaction, and the captain found himself in a broad, enclosed stairway. He went up the stairs, holding his breath, grateful that the steps were stone and not creaking wood. At the top, he paused in the shelter of a large armoire to orient himself. Then he took a few paces forward, hesitated in the shadowy corridor, counted two doors to the right, and went in,
vizcaína
in hand, holding his sword to prevent it from knocking against some piece of furniture. Next to the window, Luis de Alquézar was snoring like a pig, in deep shadow relieved by the soft glow of an oil lamp. Diego Alatriste could not contain a secret smile: his powerful enemy, the royal secretary, was afraid of the dark.

Alquézar, only half awake, was slow to understand that he was not having a nightmare. But when he started to turn onto his other side and the sharp gouge of a dagger beneath his chin prevented him, he realized this was not a bad dream. Frightened, he tried to sit up, blinked his eyes, and opened his mouth to scream, but Diego Alatriste’s hand quickly covered it.

“One word,” whispered the captain, “and you are a dead man.”

Between the nightcap and the iron hand that was gagging him, the eyes and mustache of the royal secretary were quivering with terror. A few inches from his face, the weak light of the lamp outlined Alatriste’s aquiline profile, the luxuriant mustache, the sharp blade of the dagger.

“Do you have armed guards?” asked the captain.

Alquézar shook his head no. His breath moistened the palm of the captain’s hand.

“Do you know who I am?”

The terrified eyes blinked, and after an instant the head nodded affirmatively. And when Alatriste took his hand away from Luis de Alquézar’s mouth, he did not try to shout. Mouth agape, frozen with stupor, he stared at the shadow bending over him as if seeing a ghost. The captain pressed the tip of the dagger a little harder against Alquézar’s throat.

“What are you going to do with the boy?” demanded Alatriste.

Alquézar’s bulging eyes saw nothing but the dagger. His nightcap had fallen onto the pillow, and the lamp illuminated sparse, tangled, greasy hair that accentuated his ignoble round face, heavy nose, and short, scraggly beard.

“I do not know whom you mean.”

The royal secretary’s voice was weak and hoarse, but even the threat of the steel could not mask his indignation. Alatriste pressed the dagger until he evoked a moan.

“Then I will kill you right now, sure as there is a God.”

Alquézar moaned again. He was petrified, not daring to blink. The sheets and his nightshirt stank of bitter sweat, fear, and hatred.

“It is not in my hands,” he babbled finally. “The Inquisition…”

“Don’t fuck with me. Not the Inquisition. Fray Emilio Bocanegra and you, just you two.”

Very slowly Alquézar lifted a conciliatory hand, never taking his eyes from the dagger pressing against his throat. “Perhaps something…” he murmured. “We could perhaps try…”

He was frightened, but it was also true that in the light of day, when that dagger was not at his throat, the royal secretary’s attitude could change. No doubt it would, but Alatriste had nothing to lose by trying.

“If anything happens to the boy,” he said, his face only inches away from Alquézar’s, “I will come back here as I have come tonight. I will come to kill you like a dog, slit your throat while you sleep.”

“I tell you again that the Inquisition…”

The oil in the lamp sputtered, and for a moment its light reflected in the captain’s eyes was a spark from the flames of Hell. “While you sleep,” he repeated, and beneath the hand resting on Alquézar’s chest, he could feel that the man was shaking. “I swear it.”

No one would have doubted this for an instant, and the royal secretary’s gaze reflected that certainty. But the captain also saw his relief at knowing he was not going to be killed that night. In the world of this loathsome creature, night was night and day was day, and like a new chess game, everything could begin again in the morning. And suddenly, like a revelation, Alatriste realized that the royal secretary would be back in command the moment the dagger was removed. The knowledge that despite anything he could do, I was already sentenced to death, filled Alatriste with an icy, hopeless rage. He hesitated, and Alquézar immediately perceived that hesitation with alarm. In one terrible flash, as if the steel of the
vizcaína
transmitted a glimpse of Alquézar’s sinister thoughts, the captain saw everything clearly.

“If you kill me now,” Alquézar said slowly, “nothing will save the boy.”

It was true. But neither would the boy be saved if he left this man alive. With that, the captain stepped back a little, just enough to allow a brief reflection upon whether it was a good idea to slit the royal secretary’s throat here and now, and at least leave one fewer serpent in that nest of vipers. But my fate stayed his arm. He turned to take a look around him, as if needing space for his thoughts, and as he turned, his elbow struck a water jug on the night table, something he had not seen in the darkness. The jug exploded on the floor with a sound like a harquebus shot. Alatriste, still indecisive, bent to put his dagger back to his enemy’s throat, just as a light appeared in the doorway. The captain looked up to see Angélica de Alquézar in her nightdress, a candle in her hand, surprised and sleepy-eyed, taking in the scene.

From that instant on, everything happened in rapid succession. The girl screamed, a piercing, bloodcurdling scream that was not fear but malice. It was long and drawn out, like the cry of a female falcon when a predator steals her chicks. It rang through the night, raising every hair on Alatriste’s head. Befuddled, he tried to move away from the bed, with the dagger still in his hand and not knowing what the devil to do with the girl; Angélica was already across the room, fleet as a shot.

Dropping the candle to the floor, she threw herself on the captain like a tiny Fury, all blond curls and white silk nightdress floating in the darkness like the shroud of a ghost—beautiful, he supposed, although feminine charms were the last thing on his mind. She fastened onto the arm with the dagger and bit into him like a small blond bulldog. And there she hung, teeth clamped onto his arm, tenaciously clinging to the frightened Alatriste, who in his attempt to shake her off lifted her right off the floor. But she did not budge. Occupied with her, the captain watched the girl’s uncle, liberated from the
vizcaína
that had been threatening him, leap from the bed with unexpected vigor, and rush, barelegged and in his nightshirt, to an armoire where he seized a short sword, yelling, “Murderers! Intruders! To arms!” and other such cries. Upon which Alatriste heard the house stirring: thudding footsteps and voices torn from sleep—in all, the tumult of a thousand demons.

Finally the captain succeeded in shaking the girl loose, with a cuff from his free hand that sent her rolling across the floor. Just in time he dodged a thrust from Luis de Alquézar, who, had he not been so undone by his fright, would then and there have put an end to Alatriste’s adventurous career. The harried intruder, continuing to avoid Alquézar’s blade in a chase that encompassed the entire room, put that same hand to his sword, turned, and drove Alquézar back with a two-handed swing. He then headed toward the door to make his escape, but again ran into the girl, who renewed her assault with a bellicose screech that would have turned an ordinary man’s blood to ice in his veins.

Again Angélica charged, ignoring the sword Alatriste held uselessly in front of him, and which he had to raise at the last instant to keep from skewering the girl like a chicken on a spit. In the blink of an eye, the angelic-looking Angélica again clamped tooth and nail into his arm as he danced from one corner of the room to the other, unable to rid himself of her, so encumbered that he could do nothing but parry the sword that Alquézar, without a thought for his niece, was swinging with murderous intent. This chase might have lasted through eternity, but Alatriste somehow pushed the girl aside and made a thrust at Alquézar that drove the royal secretary staggering back amid a great clatter of basins, urinals, and assorted pottery.

At last the captain was in the corridor, but only in time to spy three or four servants running up the steps brandishing their weapons. It was a bad scenario. So bad that he pulled out his pistol and fired point-blank at the men on the stairway, a confused tangle of legs, arms, swords, bucklers, and clubs. Before they had time to regroup, he ran back into the room, shot the bolt of the door, and sped like an exhalation toward the window, but not before dodging two thrusts of Alquézar’s sword and, for the third, unholy time, finding the girl clinging like a leech to his arm, biting and clawing with a ferocity unsuspected in a girl of twelve. Somehow the captain reached the window, kicked open the shutter, and slit the nightshirt of Alquézar, who was staggering clumsily toward the bed, covering himself. As Alatriste threw one leg over the iron balcony he was still shaking his arm and trying to loose Angélica’s hold. The blue eyes and tiny white teeth, which don Luis de Góngora—begging Señor de Quevedo’s pardon—had described as
aljófares,
minute pearls set between lips like rose petals, were flashing with exceptional ferocity, until Alatriste, now fed to
his
teeth with the whole matter, grabbed her by her curly locks and pulled her off his martyred arm, tossing her through the air like a furious, screaming rag doll. She landed upon her uncle and both of them crashed onto the bed, which spread its legs and collapsed noisily to the floor.

At that point, the captain dropped from the window, ran across the patio and out to the street. He did not stop running until he had left that nightmare far behind.

Alatriste stayed in the shelter of the shadows, seeking the darkest streets by which to return to Juan Vicuña’s gaming house. He went down Cava Alta and Cava Baja, along Posada de la Villa and past the shuttered shop of the apothecary Fadrique, before crossing Puerta Cerrada, where at that early hour not a soul was stirring.

He did not want to think, but it was inevitable that he would. He was certain of having committed a stupid act that only made a bad situation worse. A cold rage pounded in his pulse and blood hammered at his temples, and he would gladly have beat himself in the face to give vent to his desperation and his anger. It was the impulse to do something, not to keep waiting for others to act for him—he told himself once he had recovered a little calm—that had brought him out of his den like a desperate wolf, on the hunt for he knew not what.

It was not like him. Life, however long it lasted, was much simpler when there was no one to look out for but oneself. It was a difficult world in which every day a throat was slit, and nobody had any responsibility but to keep one’s own skin and life intact. Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, veteran of the
tercios
of Flanders and galleys of Naples, had spent long years ridding himself of any sentiment he could not resolve with a sword. But now look where he was. A boy whose name he had not even known a short while ago was turning everything upside down, making him aware that every man, however able-bodied he may be, has chinks in his armor.

And speaking of chinks. Alatriste felt his left forearm, still aching from Angélica’s bites, and could not prevent a grimace of admiration. At times, tragedies have all the earmarks of burlesque, he told himself. That tiny blond cat, of whom he had heard only vague references—though I myself had never mentioned her name, and the captain knew nothing of my relationship with her—had showed uncommon promise of ferociousness, displaying bloodlines worthy of her uncle.