Purity of Blood

A PLUME BOOK

PURITY OF BLOOD

ARTURO PEREZ-REVERTE is the internationally bestselling author of The Queen of the South and Captain Alatriste. He lives near Madrid, Spain.

“Hardboiled, mordantly funny, unapologetically entertaining.”—Time

“Wonderful, stirring entertainment.”—The New York Times Book Review

“It’s great fun in the tradition of historical swashbucklers such as The Three Musketeers or The Scarlet Pimpernel.”—The Boston Globe

“Few contemporary writers conjure up derring-do as well as Arturo Perez-Reverte, a Spanish literary maestro. The true thrill lies in Perez-Reverte’s deft plotting and thread-the-needle resolutions.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“Thrilling…we have to persuade Putnam to release them as quickly as possible.”—Detroit Free Press

“Grabs the reader from the get-go with its moody evocation of a lost time.”—USA Today

“In between the flash and clanging of swordplay, Alatriste navigates the perilous dungeons of Inquisition-era Madrid. Absolutely riveting from beginning to end.”— Entertainment Weekly

“Perez-Reverte’s pacing is swift and suspenseful, the narrative voice both crisply cinematic and true to the setting of seventeenth-century Spain…A feast of dark historical detail and believable danger.”—The Denver Post

“Purity of Blood hits the high note of Captain Alatriste and sustains the series’ uncommon verve.”—The New York Times

“Intrigue and double-dealing in seventeenth-century Madrid…Perez-Reverte is a master at evoking the particular color of the times, with brothels, taverns, torero arenas, and dark alleyways.”—Los Angeles Times

ALSO BY ARTURO PEREZ-REVERTE

Captain Alatriste

The Flanders Panel

The Club Dumas The Seville Communion

The Fencing Master

The Nautical Chart

The Queen of the South

PURITY OF BLOOD

Arturo Perez-Reverte

TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY

Margaret Sayers Peden

A PLUME BOOK

PLUME

Published by Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Putnam edition.

Copyright © Arturo Perez-Reverte, 1997

English translation copyright © Margaret Sayers Peden, 2006

All rights reserved

 REGISTERED TRADEMARK— MARCA REGISTRADA

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Putnam edition as follows:

Perez-Reverte, Arturo.

[Limpieza de sangre. English]     Purity of blood / Arturo Perez-Reverte;     translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden.

          p. cm.     ISBN: 1-4295-2325-5     I. Peden, Margaret Sayers. II. Title.  PQ6666.E765L5613 2006 2005050984  863'.64—dc22

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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For Carlota,

for whom there is no choice

but to fight…

Glory and honor blazoned on the quarters of the escutcheon, hidalgos, poets, priests, fabulous Americas, ladies-in-waiting,

galleys that apprehend the infidel, gibbets by the roadside, adventures, and swords flashing on every