“Then I will kill you right now, sure as there is a God.”
Alquezar 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 Alquezar 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 Alquezar’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 Alquezar’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 Alquezar immediately perceived that hesitation with alarm. In one terrible flash, as if the steel of the
“If you kill me now,” Alquezar 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 Angelica de Alquezar 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; Angelica 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
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 Alquezar, 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 Alquezar’s blade in a chase that encompassed the entire room, put that same hand to his sword, turned, and drove Alquezar 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 Angelica 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 Angelica 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 Alquezar, 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 Alquezar 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 Alquezar’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 Alquezar, 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 Angelica’s hold. The blue eyes and tiny white teeth, which don Luis de Gongora—begging Senor de Quevedo’s pardon—had described as
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 Vicuna’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
