the street to another. Close by me, Angelica de Alquezar, vastly amused, was trying not to laugh.
“He took us for something we’re not,” she said, “and thought we were doing something we’re not.”
She seemed delighted with the whole situation—the strange place, the late hour, the danger. Perhaps, or so I wanted to believe, she was equally delighted to have me as her companion. Earlier, we had seen the night watch in the distance: a constable and four catchpoles armed with shields and swords and carrying a lantern. This had obliged us to take a different route, first, because the use of a sword by a boy of my years, just below the decreed limit, might be taken ill by the law. A far more serious danger, however, was the fact that Angelica’s male costume would not have survived scrutiny by the catchpoles, and such an event, while pleasant and amusing in a stage play, could have grave consequences in real life. The wearing of men’s clothes by women was strictly forbidden and was sometimes even banned in the theater. Indeed, it was only allowed if the actress was playing the part of a wronged or dishonored maiden—like Petronila and Tomasa in
This zealous desire to regulate clothing came not only from the prudes and hypocrites who later filled the bawdy houses (although that’s another story) but from the Church, which, through the offices of royal confessors, bishops, priests, and nuns (and we have always had more of them than a muleteers’ inn has bedbugs and ticks), was striving to save our souls and to stop the devil getting his own way, so much so that wearing men’s apparel came to be considered an aggravating factor when sending women to the stake in autos-da-fe. Yes, even the Holy Office of the Inquisition had a hand in the matter, as it did—and, indeed, still has—in so many aspects of life in this poor wretched Spain of ours.
That night, however, I was not feeling in the least wretched, hidden there in the shadows with Angelica de Alquezar, opposite the Tavern of the Dog. We were sitting on my cloak, waiting, and now and then our bodies touched. She was looking at the door of the inn, and I was looking at her, and sometimes, when she moved, the spluttering torch on the wall opposite would illuminate her profile, the whiteness of her skin, a few locks of blond hair escaping from beneath her felt cap. In her tight-fitting doublet and breeches, she resembled a young page, but that impression was given the lie when a brighter light fell upon her pale, fixed, resolute gaze. Occasionally, she appeared to be studying me with great calm and penetration, peering into the innermost recesses of my soul. And when she had finished, and before she resumed her watch on the inn door, the lovely line of her mouth would curve into a smile.
“Tell me something about yourself,” she said suddenly.
I placed my sword between my legs and sat for a while, nonplussed, not knowing what to say. Finally, I spoke about the first time I had seen her, in Calle de Toledo, when she was still little more than a child. I spoke about the Fuente del Acero, the dungeons of the Inquisition, the shame of the auto-da-fe, about her letter to me in Flanders, about how I had thought of her when the Dutch charged us at the Ruyter Mill and at the Terheyden barracks, while I was running after Captain Alatriste, carrying the flag, convinced that I was going to die.
“What is war like?”
She seemed to be paying close attention to my mouth, to me or to my words. I suddenly felt very grown-up. Almost old.
“Dirty,” I said simply. “Dirty and gray.”
She shook her head slowly, as if pondering this thought. Then she asked me to go on talking, and the dirt and the grayness were relegated to just one part of my memory. I rested my chin on the hilt of my sword and talked more about us—her and me. About our meeting in the Alcazar in Seville and the ambush she had led me into next to the pillars of Hercules. About our first kiss as I stood on the running board of her carriage, moments before I had to fight for my life with Gualterio Malatesta. That, more or less, is what I said. No words of love, no feelings. I merely described our meetings, the part of my life that had to do with her, and I did so with as much equanimity as possible, detail by detail, just as I remembered it and always would.
“Don’t you believe that I love you?” she said.
We gazed at each other for what seemed like centuries, and my head started to swim as if I had drunk a potion. I opened my mouth to say something—although quite what I didn’t know—or to kiss her perhaps. Not the kind of kiss she had given me in the Plaza de Santo Domingo, but a long, hard kiss, filled with a simultaneous desire to bite and caress, and with all the vigor of youth about to burst in my veins. And she smiled at me, her lips only inches from my mouth, with the serene certainty of someone who knows and waits and is capable of transforming mere chance into a man’s inevitable fate, as if long before I was born, everything had been written down in an ancient book which she kept in her possession.
“Yes, I believe . . .” I started to say.
Then her expression changed. Her eyes shifted rapidly back to the tavern door, and I followed her gaze. Two men had come out into the street, hats pulled down low over their eyes; there was a furtive air about them as they put on their cloaks. One of them was wearing a yellow doublet.
We followed them cautiously through the dark city streets. We did our best not to make a noise as we walked, trying not to lose sight of their black shapes ahead of us. Fortunately, they suspected nothing and followed a clear route: from Calle de Tudescos to Calle de la Veronica, and from there to Postigo de San Martin, which they followed as far as San Luis de los Franceses. There they paused to doff their hats to a priest who was just coming out of the church, accompanied by an altar boy and a page bearing a lantern, obviously setting out to give someone the last rites. In the brief light cast by that lantern, I had a chance to study the two men we were following: apart from his eyes, the face of the man in the yellow doublet was entirely hidden by his black hat and cloak; he was wearing shoes and hose, and when he removed his hat, I noticed that he had fair hair. The other man was wearing a featherless hat, boots, and a gray cloak, which his sword lifted up behind; and as he was leaving the Tavern of the Dog, I caught a glimpse of his belt and noticed that, as well as the sword buckled on over his thick jerkin, he had a fine pair of pistols, too.
“They look like dangerous men,” I whispered to Angelica.
“And does that worry you?”
I was too offended to reply. The men continued walking, and we followed behind. A little farther on, in San Luis, next to the stone cross that still marks the site of one of the city’s old gates, we passed the stalls where they sold bread or food and drinks during the day; they were all closed and there was not a soul in sight. In Calle del Caballero de Gracia, the men stopped in a doorway to avoid a light advancing toward them; as the light passed us, we saw that it was a midwife hurrying to assist at a birth, her path lit by a nervous, harried husband. Then the two men continued on, always keeping to the part of the street where the moonlight did not reach. We pursued them for a fair distance through dark streets, past barred windows with shutters or lowered blinds, past startled cats, past the oily flames of candles in niches containing images of the Virgin or of saints, and, in the distance, we caught the occasional warning cry of someone emptying a chamber pot into the street. From an alleyway came the sound of clashing steel, of furious fighting, and the two men stopped to listen; the incident clearly held no interest for them, however, because they did not linger. When Angelica and I reached the same spot, a figure, his cloak masking his face, ran past us, sword in hand. I peered cautiously down the alley and saw nothing but more barred windows and flowerpots; then I heard someone at the far end moan. I sheathed my sword—I had whisked it out at the sight of the fugitive—and made as if to go to the aid of the wounded man, but Angelica gripped my arm.
“It’s not our business.”
“But someone might be dying,” I protested.
