Purity of Blood

The swift black shadow of a cat crossed their path. They were near the tower of the Hospital de la Concepcion, and a woman’s voice cried out, “Watch out below!” Wisely, they jumped aside, and heard the chamber pot being emptied onto the street from above.

“One last thing,” said Saldana. “There is a certain swordsman you must keep an eye out for. Apparently, parallel to the official plot, there is a semi-official one.”

“What plot are you referring to?” And in the darkness, Alatriste smirked and twisted his mustache. “I thought I just heard you say that you know nothing at all.”

“The Devil take you, Captain.”

“They want me to wake with the Devil, that is true.”

“Well, blast it, do not let that happen.” Saldana adjusted his cape more comfortably around his shoulders, and his pistols and all the iron he wore at his waist clinked lugubriously. “That person I was speaking of is going around making inquiries about you. He has recruited half a dozen of those big talkers to fillet your innards before you have time to say ‘good day.’ The bastard’s name is…”

“Malatesta. Gualterio Malatesta.”

Martin Saldana’s quiet laugh was heard again. “The very one,” he confirmed. “Italian, I believe.”

“From Sicily. Once we worked together. Or rather, we did half a job together. We have crossed paths another time or two since then.”

“Well, by Christ, you did not leave a pleasant memory behind. I believe he very much wants to see you.”

“What more do you know of him?”

“Very little. He has the support of powerful sponsors, and he is good at his trade. Apparently he went around Genoa and Naples, killing right and left on behalf of others. They say he enjoys it. He lived a time in Seville, and he has been here in Madrid about a year. If you want, I can make further inquiries.”

Alatriste did not answer. They had come to the far end of El Prado de Atocha, and before them lay the empty darkness of the gardens, the meadow, and the start of the road to Vallecas. They stood quietly, listening to the chirping of crickets. It was Saldana who spoke first.

“Use caution on Sunday,” he said in a low voice, as if the place were filled with indiscreet listeners. “I would not like to have to put you in shackles. Or kill you.”

Still the captain said nothing. Wrapped in his cape, he had not moved. Beneath the brim of his hat, his face was darker than the night.

Saldana breathed a hoarse sigh, took a few steps as if to leave, sighed again, and stopped with an ill-humored “I swear by all that’s holy.”

“Listen, Diego,” Saldana continued. Like Alatriste, he was staring into the dark meadow. “Neither you nor I have many illusions about the world it has been our lot to live in. I am weary. I have a beautiful wife and employ that I like and that allows me to save a little. That makes it necessary, when I am carrying my lieutenant’s staff, for me not to know my own father. I may in fact be a whoreson, but I am my own whoreson. I would like for you—”

“You talk too much, Martin.”

The captain had spoken softly, in an abstracted tone. Saldana removed his hat and ran one of his broad hands across a skull barely covered with hair.

“You’re right. I talk too much. Maybe because I am getting old.” He sighed for the third time, eyes still focused on the darkness, listening to the crickets. “We are both getting old, Captain. You and I.”

In the distance, they heard bells marking the hour. Alatriste did not move. “We haven’t many years left,” the captain said.

“Not many at all, pardiez.” The chief constable put on his hat, hesitated an instant, and then walked back to the captain, stopping at his side. “There are not many who share our memories and silences. And of them, few are the men they used to be.”

He whistled an old military tune. A little song about the old tercios, raids, plunder, and victories. They had sung it together, with my father and other comrades, eighteen years before in the sacking of Ostend and on the long march from the Rhine toward Friesland with don Ambrosio Spinola, when they took Oldenzaal and Lingen.

“But it may be true,” Saldana said in conclusion, “that this century no longer deserves men like us. I am referring to the men we once were.”

Once again he looked toward Alatriste. The captain slowly nodded.

The thin moon cast a vague, formless shadow at their feet.

“It may be,” the captain murmured, “that we do not deserve them either.”

IX.AUTO - DA - FE

The Spain of the fourth Philip, like that of his predecessors, was enchanted with the ritual burning of heretics and Jews. An auto-da- fe attracted thousands of spectators, from aristocracy to the lowest townsman. And when one was celebrated in Madrid, it was witnessed from the loges of honor by Their Majesties the king and queen. Even Queen Isabel, who, because she was young, and French, was at first repelled by such activities, eventually became an enthusiast, like everyone else. The only thing Spanish the daughter of Henri the Bearnaise never accepted was to live in El Escorial, which she always found too cold, too grand, and too sinister for her taste. She was, however, subjected to that vexation posthumously: having never wanted to set foot inside it, she was buried there after her death. Though it is not such a bad place to be, God knows, laid to rest alongside the imposing tombs of Emperor Charles the Fifth and his son the great Philip, ancestors of our fourth Austrian monarchy. Thanks to whom—great leaders that they were, whether for bad or ill, and to the despair of Turks, French, Dutch, English, and the whore who birthed them all—Spain, for a century and a half, had Europe and the world by their tender testicles.

But let us return to the bonfire. Preparations for the fiesta, in which, to my misfortune, I had a reserved place, began a day or two before the event. There was great activity by carpenters and other workmen in the Plaza Mayor, where they were constructing a high platform fifty feet long facing an amphitheater of stair-stepped benches,