knife-sharp profile.
I was feigning sleep. Caridad la Lebrijana was sitting by the head of the bed, where she had tucked me in after supper and a warm bath in a large tub brought from the tavern. She was watching over me while, by candlelight, she mended some of the captain’s linen. Eyes closed, I was enjoying the warmth of the bed, in a delicious half-sleep that also allowed me to keep from answering questions or having to say anything about my recent adventure. The mere thought of it—I could not get the infamous sanbenito out of my mind—still ate into me like acid. The warmth of the sheets, the kind company of La Lebrijana, the knowledge that I was among friends, and especially the prospect of lying there in the quiet, eyes closed, as the world outside whirled on with no thought of me, had lulled me into a lethargy resembling happiness, compounded by the thought that during my imprisonment no one had torn a word from me that would incriminate Diego Alatriste.
I did not open my eyes when I heard steps on the stairway, or when La Lebrijana, swallowing an exclamation, threw her mending to the floor and herself into the captain’s arms. I lay listening to the quiet murmur of conversation, several resounding kisses from the tavern keeper, the new arrival’s mutter of protest, and footsteps receding down the stairs. I thought I was alone until after a long silence I again heard the captain’s boots, this time approaching the bed, and stopping there.
I nearly opened my eyes, but did not. I knew that he had seen me in the plaza, humiliated among the penitents. And I had not been able to forget that because I had disobeyed his orders, I had let myself be trapped like a linnet the night we attacked the convent of the Adoratrices Benitas. In short, I still did not find myself strong enough to confront his questions or his reproaches. Not even the silence of his gaze. So I lay motionless, breathing evenly to feign sleep.
There was an endless time during which nothing happened. No doubt he was watching me in the light of the candle La Lebrijana had left by the bed. Not a sound, not his breathing, nothing at all. And then, when I was beginning to doubt that he actually was there, I felt the touch of his hand, the rough palm that he laid for a moment on my forehead, with a warmth and unexpected tenderness. He held it there a moment and then brusquely pulled away. I heard the steps again, and the sound of the cupboard being opened, the clink of a glass and a jug of wine, and the scraping of a chair being moved.
Cautiously, I opened my eyes. In the dim light of the room I saw that the captain had unfastened his doublet and unbuckled his sword. Seated by the table, he was drinking in silence. The wine gurgled again and again as it was poured into the glass. He drank slowly, methodically, as if he had nothing else in the world to do. The yellowish candlelight illuminated the light blotch of his shirt, the plane of his face, his short-trimmed hair, the tip of his thick soldier’s mustache. He was silent, not moving except to drink. Behind him was the window he had opened, and I could see vague outlines of nearby rooftops and chimneys. Over them shone a single star, still, silent, cold. Alatriste stared fixedly into the void, or at his own ghosts wandering in the darkness. I knew his eyes when the wine clouded them, and I could guess how they looked at that moment: glaucous, absent. At his waist, blood was slowly soaking the bandage on his hip, staining his white shirt with red.
He seemed as resigned and alone as the star winking outside in the night.
Two days later, sun was shining on Calle de Toledo, and again the world was wide and filled with hope, and the vigor of youth was leaping in my veins. Sitting at the door of the Tavern of the Turk, practicing my penmanship with the writing materials Licenciado Calzas kept bringing me from La Provincia plaza, I was again seeing life with that optimism and that speedy recovery following misfortune that only good health and youth can give. From time to time I looked over toward the women selling vegetables in the stands across the street, the hens pecking scraps, and the ragamuffins running around among the horses and coaches, as I listened to the sound of conversations inside the tavern. I considered myself the most contented boy in the world. Even the verses I was copying seemed to me the most beautiful ever written.
The words were don Francisco de Quevedo’s, and they had seemed so lovely when I heard him casually reciting them between sips of San Martin de Valdeiglesias, that I had asked his permission to write them out in my best hand. Don Francisco was inside with the captain and the others—the
It was at that verse when, as I looked up again, my hand stopped in midair and a drop of ink fell onto my page like a tear. Up Calle de Toledo came a very familiar black coach, one with no escutcheon on the door and a stern coachman driving the two mules. Slowly, as if in a dream, I set aside paper, pen, ink, and drying sand, and stood rooted as if the carriage were an apparition that any wrong movement on my part might dispel. As the coach pulled up to where I stood, I saw the little window, which was open, with the curtains unfastened. First I saw a perfect white hand, and then the blond curls and the sky-blue eyes that Diego Velazquez later painted: the girl who had led me to within a breath of the gallows. And as the carriage rolled past the Tavern of the Turk, Angelica de Alquezar looked straight at me, in a way—I swear by all that is holy—that sent a chill from the tip of my spine to my bewitched and furiously pounding heart. On an impulse, without considering what I was doing, I placed my hand on my chest, honestly and truly lamenting that I was not wearing the gold chain with the amulet that she had given me to ensure a sentence of death, and which, had the Holy Office not taken it from me, I swear by Christ’s blood I would have continued to wear around my neck with besotted pride.
Angelica understood the gesture. Her smile, that diabolic expression I so adored, lighted her lips. And then with a fingertip, she brushed them in something very like a kiss. And Calle de Toledo, and Madrid—the entire sphere— vibrated with a delicious harmony that made me feel jubilantly alive.
I stood watching, still as stone, long after the carriage disappeared up the street. Then, choosing a new quill, I smoothed the point against my doublet and finished putting down don Francisco’s sonnet.
It was growing dark, but not yet dark enough for a lantern. The Posada Lansquenete was situated on a filthy, stinking street derisively called Calle de la Primavera—though there was no perfume of springtime there! It was near the Lavapies fountain, the location of the lowest taverns and wine cellars in Madrid, as well as of its most ruinous brothels. Clothes were drying on lines strung from one side of the street to the other, and through open windows came the noise of quarrels and crying babies. Horse droppings were piled at the entrance to the inn, and Diego Alatriste took care not to soil his boots when he went into the corral-like courtyard where a broken-down cart with no wheels, only bare axles, was set up on stones. After a quick glance around, he took the stairs, and after thirty or so steps, and after four or five cats had darted between his legs, he reached the top floor without challenge.
