Captain Alatriste

'It isn't a question of money.'

'There are swords to spare in Madrid,' hinted the man with the mask, annoyed. The captain was not sure whether he meant in regard to looking for a substitute or for someone to settle scores if they refused the new arrangement. Alatriste was not pleased by the possibility that it was a threat. Out of habit, he twisted his mustache with his right hand as he slowly rested his left on the pommel of his sword. No one failed to register his move.

The priest whipped around to face Alatriste squarely. The ascetic's face had hardened, and his arrogant, sunken eyes bored into the captain's.

'I,' he said in his disagreeable voice, 'am Fray Emilio Bocanegra, president of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition.'

With those words, an icy wind seemed to blow across the room. The priest made clear to Diego Alatriste and the Italian, succinctly, and menacingly, that he did not need a mask to hide his identity, or come to them like a thief in the night, because the power God had placed in his hands was sufficient to annihilate any enemy of the Holy Mother Church or His Catholic Majesty, the King of all the Spains. That said, while his listeners swallowed nervously, he paused to assess the effect of his words, then continued in the same threatening tone.

'Yours are sinful, mercenary hands, stained with blood like your swords and your consciences. But the Omnipotent Heavenly Father writes straight with crooked lines.'

The crooked lines exchanged an uneasy glance as the priest continued. 'Tonight,' he said, 'I am entrusting to you a task of sacred inspiration,' and he added, 'You are to fulfill it regardless of the cost, because in so doing you serve divine justice. If you refuse, if you cast aside the burden, the wrath of God will fall upon you through the long and terrible arm of the Holy Office. We are like muleteers. Ubiquitous and persistent.'

With that the Dominican was silent, and no one dared speak a word. Even the Italian had forgotten his tra-la- las, and that said a lot.

In the Spain of that day, to quarrel with the powerful Inquisition meant to confront a series of horrors that often included prison, torture, the stake, and death. Even the toughest men trembled at the mention of the Holy Office, and for his part, Diego Alatriste, like all Madrid, knew very well the infamous reputation of Fray Emilio Bocanegra, president of the Council of Six Judges, whose influence reached as far as the Grand Inquisitor, and even the private corridors of the Royal Palace. Only a week before, because of a so-called crimen pessimum, Padre Bocanegra had convinced the tribunal to burn four young servants of the Conde de Monteprieto in the Plaza Mayor when, after being subjected to the Inquisitorial rack, they denounced each other as sodomites. As for the aristocratic count— himself a bachelor and a melancholy man—his title as a grandee of Spain had saved him from an identical fate by only a hair's breadth. The king contented himself with signing a decree to seize his possessions and send him into exile in Italy. The merciless Bocanegra had personally conducted the entire proceedings, and that triumph was the last step in securing his fearsome power at court. Even the Conde de Olivares, a favorite of the king, tried to please the ferocious Dominican.

This was no time to so much as blink. Captain Alatriste sighed deep inside, realizing that the two Englishmen, whoever they might be and despite the good intentions of the heavier masked man, had been sentenced without reprieve. They were dealing with the Church, and arguing any further would be, in addition to fruitless, dangerous.

'What are we to do?' he said finally, resigned to the inevitable.

'Kill them outright,' Fray Emilio replied instantly, the fire of fanaticism blazing in his eyes.

'Without knowing who they are?'

'We have already told you who they are,' the masked man with the round head reminded him. 'Misters Thomas and John Smith. English travelers.'

'And ungodly Anglicans,' added the priest, his voice crackling with anger. 'But you have no need to know who they are. It is enough that they come from a land of heretics—a treacherous people, anathema to Spain and the Catholic religion. By executing God's will, you will render a valuable service to the All Powerful and to the crown.'

Having said this, the priest took out another purse containing twenty gold coins and disdainfully tossed it on the table.

'You see now,' he added, 'that divine justice, unlike the earthly kind, pays in advance, although over time it collects its return.' He stared at the captain and the Italian as if engraving their faces in his memory. 'No one escapes His eyes, and God knows very well where to come to collect His debts.'

Diego Alatriste made as if to nod in agreement. He was a man with brass, but actually the gesture was an attempt to hide a shudder. The lamplight made the priest look diabolical, and the menace in his voice would have been enough to alter the composure of the bravest of men. Standing beside the captain, the Italian was pale, without his ti-ri-tu, ta-ta or his smile. Not even the round-headed man dared open his mouth.

III. A LITTLE LADY

Perhaps because a man's true homeland is his childhood, despite all the time that has gone by, I always remember the Tavern of the Turk with nostalgia. The place, Captain Alatriste, and those hazardous years of my boyhood are all gone now, but in the days of our Philip the Fourth, the tavern was one of four hundred in which the seventy thousand residents of Madrid could quench their thirst. That comes to about one tavern for every one hundred and seventy-five citizens. And that is not counting brothels, gaming houses, and other public establishments of, shall we say, relaxed or dubious moral ambience, which in a paradoxical, unique, and never- again-to-be-the-same Spain were visited as frequently as the churches—and often by the same people.

La Lebrijana's enterprise was in fact a cellar of the sort where one came to eat, drink, and burn the night away, located on the corner of Calles Toledo and Arcabuz, about five hundred steps from the Plaza Mayor. The two rooms where Diego Alatriste and I lived were on the upper floor, and in a way the den below served as our sitting room. The captain liked to go down there to kill time when he had nothing better to do—which was often. Despite the smell of grease and smoke from the kitchen, the dirty floor and tables, and the mice running around, chased by the cat or looking for bread crumbs, it was a comfortable-enough place. It was also entertaining, because there were frequently travelers brought by post horse, and magistrates, tipstaves, flower vendors, and shopkeepers from the nearby Providencia and La Cebada plazas, as well as former soldiers drawn by the proximity of the principal streets of the city and the mentidero at San Felipe el Real, a center where idlers gathered to gossip. Not to disdain the tavern's attractions—a little faded but still splendid—and the longtime fame of the tavernkeeper and the Valdemoro wines—a muscatel as well as an aromatic San Martin de Valdeiglesias—but the place had another drawing card. It was blessed with a back gate that opened onto a courtyard and the next street, a very handy feature when one was slipping away from sheriffs, catchpoles, creditors, poets, friends in need of money, and other miscreants and inopportune guests.