Purity of Blood (7 page)

I am pretending, my beloved husband,

to be needing “regulation,”

that I may deceive a jealous father

and an aunt’s intimidation.

So I apologize to Your Mercies for the youthful spirit of chivalry and adventure with which I followed behind the coach of my beloved, knowing I was heading to a place well known for intrigue, and lamenting only that I was not yet old enough to wear a gleaming sword at my belt with which to carve rivals into little pieces. I was a long way from imagining that, with time, my wishes would be fulfilled, point by point. But when the hour actually came for me to kill for Angélica de Alquézar—and I did kill for her—neither she nor I were children. All my romancing had ceased, and life was no longer a game.

Pardiez.
I wander in circles, with digressions and leaps in time that take me away from the thread of my tale. So I shall pick it up again by calling Your Mercies’ attention to something central to my story: the enthusiasm at seeing my beloved that caused me to commit a careless act I would later deeply regret.

Ever since don Vicente de la Cruz’s visit I had thought I detected the movement of suspicious people around our house. Nothing truly disturbing, it is true; only a couple of faces that were not usually seen either on Calle del Arcabuz or in the Tavern of the Turk. I suppose that this in itself was not overly strange, for on Cava Baja, as well as other streets in the neighborhood, there were a number of inns. But that morning I had noticed something I would have given more consideration to had I not been waiting for Angélica to pass by. It was only later that I gave it proper thought, when I had ample time to mull over the events that had brought me to the sinister place I found myself in. Or where, to be more accurate, I found myself forced to go.

It had happened that after we returned from the mass at the church of Las Benitas, I stood at the tavern door, and Diego Alatriste went on to Calle de los Correos, where he had business at the letter-office. And at that moment, as the captain was walking up Toledo, two strangers strolling past the fruit stands with an innocent air exchanged a few words in a low voice before one of them turned and followed the captain. I watched from where I was, wondering whether it was a chance move or whether the two were planning some thievery, when Angélica’s carriage went by and erased everything but her from my mind. And yet, as I later had bitter opportunity to lament, the ear-to-ear mustaches, the wide-brimmed hats pulled down in swashbuckling fashion, the swords and daggers, and the swaggering walk of those two bullies, should have made me dog their steps. But God, the Devil, or whoever plays us life’s pranks, always watches with amusement as through carelessness, pride, or ignorance, we find ourselves walking on the sharp edge of the knife.

She was as beautiful as Lucifer before his expulsion from Paradise. Her carriage had stopped beneath the poplar trees lining the road, and she had got out of the coach to stroll around the fountain. She had not yet outgrown her blond curls, and the lustrous cloth of her dress, as blue as her eyes, seemed to have been cut from the cloudless sky that framed the rooftops and towers of Madrid, its ancient wall, and the solid mass of the palace. After the coachman hobbled his mules, he had gone to join his fellow drivers, and the duenna had gone to fill a receptacle with water from the famed fountain. Angélica was alone. I felt my heart thumping as I drew closer beneath the trees, and from a distance I watched as she graciously greeted a few young friends who were having a little social, and then, after stealing a glance toward the distant chaperone, accepted a treat they offered her.

At that moment, I would have given all my youth and all my dreams to be, instead of a humble, beardless page, one of the dashing hidalgos—or at least men who resembled hidalgos—following the paths, twisting their mustaches as they sighted appealing señoritas, addressing a few clever words to them, hat in hand, fist elegantly posed on a hip or on the pommel of a sword. It was undoubtedly true that there were also ordinary folk there, no few of them, and with experience I learned that in those days, as in ours, not everything that glisters is good breeding, for there were whores and rogues among them who gave themselves airs out of vanity or a wish to improve their lot. Whatever their background, however dubious, Jew or Moor, it was enough to have bad handwriting, speak slowly and gravely, have debts, ride a horse, and carry a sword, in order to pass oneself off as a gentleman. But to my young eyes, anyone who wore a cape and sword—or clog shoes, fine petticoats, and farthingales—seemed to me to be a person of quality. At that point, I did not know much of the world.

A few dandies rode by on horseback, making their mounts rear and curvet as they neared a coach filled with ladies—or doxies—flirting with them whoever they were, and I wished with all my heart to be one of them, to rein in my horse and address Angélica in exquisite phrases. By now, she had penetrated deeper into the grove and, gathering up her underskirts with infinite grace, was meandering among the ferns that bordered the banks of the stream. Her eyes seemed to be fixed on the ground, and as I drew closer I could see that she was following the path of a long line of industrious ants scurrying back and forth with the discipline of German infantrymen. More venturesome than ever before, I took a few more steps in her direction before some twigs snapped beneath my feet. She looked up at me. Or it might be more accurate to say that the sky and her gown and her gaze enveloped me like a warm mist, and I felt my head whirl the way it did in the Tavern of the Turk from the vapors of wine spilled on the table, clouding my senses and making everything seem very slow and far away.

“I know you,” she said.

She did not smile, nor did she seem surprised or displeased by my presence. She looked at me with curiosity, in the way that mothers and older sisters look before they say “You have grown a good inch,” or “Your voice is changing.” To my good fortune, I was wearing an old but clean doublet that had no patches, and passable breeches; also, following the captain’s orders, I had washed my face and ears. I strove to pass her scrutiny without flinching, and after a brief struggle with my innate shyness, I was able to return her gaze serenely.

“My name is Íñigo Balboa,” I said.

“I know. You are the friend of that Captain Triste, or Batristre.”

She spoke with a very familiar tone, as she might to a friend or a servant. But she had said “friend” of the captain, and not “page” or “servant.” More, she had remembered who I was. That alone—which in other circumstances might not be calming in the least, since my name or Alatriste’s on the lips of the niece of Luis de Alquézar was more a promise of danger than cause for satisfaction—seemed to me completely adorable, making me happier than the gift of new doublet and breeches of Castile woolen. Angélica remembered my name. And with it, a portion of the life that I was resolved to place at her feet, sacrificing it to her without so much as blinking. I felt, and I wonder if you will truly know what I mean, like a man run through with a dagger: that I would live as long as it was not pulled out, and that removing it would kill me.

“Have you come for the healing waters?” I asked, to break the silence that the intensity of her gaze had made unbearable.

She wrinkled her nose and pouted. “I eat too many sweets,” she said. Then she shrugged her shoulders in a childish way, as if that was a stupid concern. She looked toward the fountain where her duenna was standing talking with a acquaintance.

“It’s ridiculous,” she added scornfully.

I deduced that Angélica de Alquézar did not hold the highest regard for the dragon charged with looking after her, nor of the physics of physicians who with their bloodletting and remedies dispatched more Christians than the hangman of Seville.

“So I imagine,” I replied courteously. “Everyone knows that sweets are good for one’s health.” I vaguely remembered having heard the pharmacist Fadrique say something similar in the tavern. “They build up the blood and the humors. I am sure that a honey bun, or a fritter, or custards, do more to stimulate melancholy humors than water from that fountain.”

I stopped, hesitant to go any further, for I had exhausted my pharmaceutical knowledge.

“You have a funny accent,” she said.

“It’s Basque,” I replied. “I was born in Oñate.”

“I thought that Basques cut off their words,” she said, and recited an old Basque saying, imitating their clipped speech:
“If you put down the lance and pick up the sword, soon you will see who has the last word…”

She laughed. If it did not sound pretentious, I would tell you that her laughter was argentine. It rang like the polished silver that artisans in the port of Guadalajara hang on the door of their shops on Corpus Christi feast day.

“That is how persons from Biscay talk.” I was unsure of the difference, but I was vaguely irritated. “Oñate is in Guipúzcoa.”

I felt a compelling need to impress her, without the least notion of how. Clumsily, I tried to pick up the thread of my disquisition on the beneficial properties of sweets. I lowered my voice to sound more manly. “Now. In regard to melancholy humors…”

I was interrupted when a dog raced toward us, a large brown mastiff that had been charging about the area. Instinctively, I stepped between it and Angélica. The dog ran off without looking for a fight, as had the lion from don Quixote, and when I turned to look again, Angélica was observing me as she had when I first spoke, her curiosity apparent.

“And what do you know of my humors?”

A note of defiance resonated in her voice, and those intensely blue eyes had become very serious; there was no suggestion of a child in them. Those lips! Still parted after her question. That soft, rounded chin. Those blond spirals of curls touching shoulders covered with delicate Flemish lace. I was enslaved. I tried to swallow without being obvious.

“I know nothing, as yet,” I replied, as candidly as I could. “But I know I would give my life for you.”

I may have blushed as I spoke those words, but there are things you must say when it is time to say them, or risk regretting it all your life. Although what one may later regret is having spoken them at all.

“I would give my life,” I repeated.

There was a long, thrilling silence. The chaperone was coming back, black beneath her white headgear, like a magpie of bad omen, with the flask of water in her hand. The dragon was about to retake possession of my damsel, so I started to leave, wanting to put distance between us. But Angélica was still studying me as if she were able to read my thoughts. She put her hands to her throat and pulled out a delicate gold chain with a small charm hanging from it. She undid the clasp, and put the chain in my hands.

“Perhaps one day you may die,” she whispered.

As she spoke those words, her enigmatic eyes never left mine, and at the same time, a smile came to her lips. It was a smile so beautiful, so perfect, so filled with all the light in a Spanish sky vast as the abyss of her eyes, that I wanted to die that instant, sword in hand, shouting her name as there in Flanders my father had shouted the name of his king, his homeland, and his flag. After all was said and done, I thought, maybe those things were all one and the same.

IV. THE ASSAULT

Far in the distance, a dog barked four times, and after that…silence. Well armed, with pistol, sword, and dagger at his waist, Captain Alatriste looked at the moon that seemed about to impale itself upon the tower of Las Benitas convent, and then, turning his head from side to side, his eyes swept the shadowy corners of La Encarnación plaza. The coast was clear.

The captain adjusted his buffalo skin jerkin and tossed back the tails of the short cape over his shoulders. As if that had been a signal, three dark silhouettes emerged from the gloom, two from one side of the plaza and one from the other, and moved toward the convent wall. Light shone from one window; almost immediately it was extinguished, then quickly relighted.

“It is she,” whispered don Francisco de Quevedo.

He was stationed beside the wall, all in black—hat, clothing, and cape—and he had not drunk a drop all night despite the chill—in order, he said, to have a steady hand. I could not see him, but I heard him slowly draw his sword halfway from its scabbard and then let it drop back, testing whether it moved smoothly. And I also heard him mutter a few words of his own composition:

“Night could not overcome my sorrows

nor give peace to my vexations…”

I wondered briefly whether don Francisco was reciting verse to relieve his anxiety, to counter the cold, or whether he truly had ice in his veins and was capable of composing poems at the very Gates of Hell. Whatever the case, this was not the time to give the proper due to the flower of his satiric genius. My attention was focused on the captain, whose dark profile, masked by shadow, was still as a statue beneath the broad brim of his hat. The three dark shapes that had slipped across the plaza earlier were also frozen, attempting to remain unseen. The dog barked again, only twice this time, and from the hill of Los Caños del Peral came, as answer, the faint nickers of the mules of the waiting coach. With that sound, Diego Alatriste turned toward me. His eyes were palest gray in the moonlight.

“Be very cautious,” he said.

He put his hand on my shoulder. I took a deep breath and bolted across the plaza, feeling like the boy who stuck his head in the wolf’s mouth, aware of the captain’s eyes on me. In my ears, the homage don Francisco was kind enough to improvise, rewriting some verses of his own:

“How easily he scales the high wall of stone

spurred on by his youth.”

My heart was pounding as hard as it had earlier that day when I had been so close to Angélica de Alquézar. Or perhaps more. I felt an almost unbearable tightness in my stomach and my throat, and unfamiliar drums were sounding in my ears as I passed the crouching shapes of don Vicente de la Cruz and his two sons. They were huddled against the wall, and I could see the glint of metal from between the folds of their capes.

“Quickly, lad,” whispered the father, impatient.

I nodded, and followed the wall toward the carriage guard at the corner. There I surreptitiously crossed myself, commending myself to the same God whose holy sanctuary I was about to violate. With no difficulty at all—at the time I was as agile as a monkey—I climbed up onto the pillar, then, teetering slightly on its narrow ledge, I reached for the wall and pulled myself up. I sat there an instant, astride, bent low so as not to be silhouetted against the moonlight. On one side below were the street and the plaza, and the silent shapes of my companions hugging the wall; on the other lay the shadowy silence of Las Benitas’s garden, broken only by the intermittent chirping of a cricket. I waited until the beating of my heart faded from my eardrums before moving again. And when I did, I felt the charm Angélica de Alquézar had given me at the Acero fountain swing out from inside my shirt, and heard the
chink!
as it struck stone.

I had spent hours studying it. It looked very old, and on it were engraved some strange and fascinating symbols.

I stuffed the amulet back into my shirt, where it lay against my bare skin, hoping and praying that it would bring me the luck I would need in this venture. The branches of the nearest apple tree scratched my face as I swung forward onto a limb and then, after hanging by my hands a few seconds, dropped the six or seven feet to the ground. I fell and rolled, without significant damage, brushed the dirt from my clothing, and, praying to the Holy Mother of God that there were no unchained dogs about, I followed the wall back to the small door and carefully drew back the bolt. The moment it was open, don Vicente de la Cruz and his sons slipped inside, wrapped in capes and weapons drawn, and ran quickly across the garden, their steps muffled by the soft earth. As for me, my job was done.

I had played my part like a lad with real backbone. Without adventures, we would never know our heroes. So I went back out to the street, well satisfied, and unhesitatingly crossed the plaza. The captain’s instructions had been very precise: Go right home by the shortest route. Leaving Las Benitas and La Encarnación behind, I started up the hill along the low parapet, serene and swollen with pride because everything had been as smooth as silk. Then I was struck by the temptation to linger just a bit near the waiting coach in order to glimpse the rescued damsel—if only by moonlight and for an instant—when her father and brothers spirited her away.

I hesitated a moment, torn between discipline and indulgence: a struggle that was never concluded. For it was in that moment of irresolution that I heard the first shot.

There were at least ten of them, Diego Alatriste calculated, as he unsheathed his dagger and his sword. And in the patio of the convent, a few more. They came from every direction. From dark corners and doorways, from the street and the plaza, burnished steel gleamed and cries of “Hold! By the authority of the Inquisition!” and “In the name of the King!” thundered through the night. More shots sounded inside the convent wall, and a tangle of figures and flashing swords could be seen at the small door. For a moment, Alatriste thought he glimpsed a novice’s white headdress amid the clashing blades, but that image was erased by the flash of more pistol shots.

Furthermore, it was the moment to look after his own health. The cry “By the authority of the Inquisition!” was enough to make anyone’s blood run cold. But now he was fighting to save his skin, and in such circumstances it mattered little whether against the Inquisition or the magistrate’s constables: throat slashed by a secular dagger, or sprinkled with holy water; neither was desirable. With his dagger he blocked a thrust from a shadow that seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. He drove back the apparition with three two-handed slashes and an oath, and out of the corner of his eye saw don Francisco de Quevedo fending off another two men. It scarcely seemed necessary—and it would have cost him precious breath needed for other purposes—to yell “We’ve been betrayed,” or something of the kind, so don Francisco and the captain applied themselves to their task, keeping their mouths more or less closed. Whoever the responsible party might be, it was clearly an ambush, and there was nothing to do now but make them pay with their lights.

The man Alatriste had driven off closed in again, and the captain, perceiving the flash of the enemy blade, set his feet, and just in time parried a patinando. He took one step forward, then another, clasped the adversary’s sword between his elbow and ribs, thrust his own forward, and heard the rewarding cry when his blade sliced across his opponent’s face. Fortunately, the champions of the Inquisition were not as skilled as Amadis of Gaul, and that was what turned the tide.

Alatriste stepped back in the darkness until his back was to a wall, and seized the brief respite to see how don Francisco was faring. The poet, faithful to his proven skill, limping and cursing under his breath, was holding his two attackers at bay. But reinforcements were arriving, and soon the friends would not have hands enough to butcher so much meat. Fortunately, most of the attackers were clustered near the convent wall, where the confusion and yelling were increasing by the minute. It was obvious that don Vicente de la Cruz and his sons were candidates for memorials. The captain smelled the acrid odor of lighted fuses.

“We have no choice but to flee,” he bellowed to don Francisco, trying to make himself heard above the
cling, cling, clang
of blades.

“Precisely what I have been attempting to do,” the poet shouted in return, between mighty slashes. “For some time now!”

He had dispatched one of his adversaries and was retreating parallel to the wall, with the second swordsman tight to his blade. A new shadow suddenly appeared before Alatriste, or perhaps it was the man he had driven off, returning now with the legions of Mohammed to wreak vengeance for the affront to his face. Sparks flew as sword clashed against sword and against stone. The captain, left arm held to protect his face, waited until his adversary shifted his feet for a better line of engagement, then lunged forward and landed a staggering kick. He lashed out with sword, dagger, and again sword. When his enemy tried to stand upright, at least half the captain’s blade was protruding from his back.

“Blessed Mary, Mother of God,” he heard the man mutter, air escaping as Alatriste pulled the sword from his chest. He blasphemed, again invoked the Virgin, and dropped to his knees beside the wall, as his sword fell between his thighs with a metallic ring.

In front of the convent, a dark figure broke swiftly from the swirl of figures. Then came the fire from the harquebuses, and street and plaza were alight in a fiesta of rockets and gunpowder. Balls whizzed past the captain and don Francisco, and one flattened itself on the wall between them.

“Fuck,” said Quevedo.

This was not a time for meter and rhyme. And men were still arriving. Alatriste, wet with sweat beneath the buffcoat that had already saved him from at least three wounds that night, looked around, searching for the best way to escape. As don Francisco retreated from his assailant, he backed into the captain. The poet had had the identical thought. Escape.

“Let every dog,” said Quevedo, panting, between a feint and a thrust, “lick his own bollocks.”

His second adversary was by now rolling, wounded, at his feet, but a third had come along, and don Francisco was getting winded. The captain, who was less engaged, clamped his dagger between his teeth, and with his left hand pulled his pistol from his belt; when he was but a handspan from the enemy harassing the poet, he fired a shot that blew away half the man’s jaw. The flash of the shot temporarily stopped any who were thinking of joining the fray, so, taking advantage of the interruption, and not awaiting an invitation, don Francisco, very spry despite his lameness, broke away, running fleetly.

After waiting a few seconds to further discourage anyone who might follow, Alatriste did the same, choosing for his retreat an alleyway that he had scouted out earlier. This was the custom of veteran soldiers, who establish escape routes before a combat, for when a bad card is dealt, there is not always sufficient time or clarity of judgment to make such useful appraisals. The narrow street he had chosen ran beneath an arch and ended at a wall that he easily leapt over, landing on a chicken coop and waking the hens. Someone lighted a lantern and shouted something from a window; by then the captain was across the courtyard, tripping in the darkness but without hurting himself. After climbing over a fence, he was free and in a reasonably good state of health, except for a few scratches and a mouth drier than the sand dunes at Nieuwpoort. He found a dark corner where he could catch his breath, wondering whether don Franciso de Quevedo had gotten away safely. Once he could hear something besides his own gasping, he listened carefully: no shots or yells from the direction of the convent.

No one,
pardiez,
would give a
maravedí
for the skin of don Vicente de la Cruz and his sons. In the little likely case that one of them was left alive.

He heard running, like that of armed men, and there was a glare of lanterns at the corner. Then all was silent again. Rested, and in command of himself, he lingered a long while in the darkness. He was trembling; the sweat beneath his buffcoat was now chill, but he paid little attention. He kept turning over and over the question of who had set that trap for them.

The shots and the clanging blades had made me retrace my steps, as I asked myself what could be happening in La Encarnación plaza. I started running back toward it, but prudence quickly gained the upper hand.
He who loses his head
—goes one of the soldiers’ sayings I had learned from the captain—
ends up really losing that head,
often with the unwelcome assistance of a rope. So I stopped, with my heart jumping out of my breast, as I tried to decide what was the best thing to do. Would I be a help or a hindrance to my friends?

That was the situation when I heard the sound of running footsteps and the hair-raising cry of “By the authority of the Inquisition!” which in that day, as I have already recounted to Your Mercies, would raise gooseflesh on the most villainous of men. It spurred me to action, I can assure you, and with the greatest caution, I had in a trice taken refuge behind the low stone parapet that served as a kind of railing down the length of the hill. I had scarcely got my breath back from my scramble over the wall when I heard footsteps nearby, more shots and cries, and the clash of steel. I had put aside my concerns about the fate of the captain and don Francisco and begun to worry about my own, when a body came tumbling over the low wall beside me.