The King's Gold

and harquebuses kept watch at the main gate.

“His Sacred, Catholic, Royal Majesty knows what he’s told, nothing more,” said Quevedo. “The great Philip is staying at the Alcazar and only leaves there to go hunting or to a party or for a nighttime visit to some convent. Our friend Guadalmedina, by the way, is acting as escort. They have become close friends.”

The word “convent,” spoken in that tone of voice, brought back grim memories, and I couldn’t help but shudder when I remembered poor Elvira de la Cruz and how close I, too, had come to being burnt at the stake. Don Francisco de Quevedo had meanwhile been distracted by the sight of a rather attractive lady. She was accompanied by her duenna and a Morisco slave girl laden with baskets and packages, and when she lifted the hem of her dress to avoid the trail of dung caking the street, she revealed fashionable cork-soled clogs. When the lady passed us on her way to the mule-drawn coach waiting a little farther on, the poet adjusted his spectacles on his nose and very courteously doffed his hat. “Lisi,” he murmured with a melancholy smile. The lady reciprocated with a slight nod before drawing her cloak more closely about her. Behind her, the aging duenna, clothed in deepest mourning, wearing a crow-black wimple and clutching a rosary, shot him a withering look. Quevedo stuck his tongue out at her. As he watched them depart, he smiled sadly and turned back to us without a word of explanation. He himself was dressed as soberly as ever: black silk stockings and shoes with silver buckles, a somber gray costume, a hat of the same color with a white feather, and the cross of St. James embroidered in red beneath the short cape caught back on his shoulder.

“Convents are his specialty,” he added after that brief, pensive pause, his eyes still fixed on the lady and her companions.

“Guadalmedina’s or the king’s?” Now it was Alatriste who was smiling beneath his soldierly mustache.

Quevedo took a while to respond, then, sighing deeply, said, “Both.”

I positioned myself next to the poet and, with eyes downcast, asked, “And the queen?”

I asked this in a casual, respectful, irreproachable tone, as if it were the mere curiosity of a boy. Don Francisco turned a penetrating eye on me.

“As lovely as ever,” he answered. “She now speaks the language of Spain a little better than she did.” He glanced at Alatriste and then back at me, his eyes glinting merrily behind the lenses of his spectacles. “She practices with her ladies-in-waiting and her mistress of the robes, and with her maids of honor.”

My heart was beating so hard I was afraid it might give me away. “Did they all accompany her on the journey?”

“They did.”

The street was spinning. She was in this fascinating city. I gazed around me: at the empty, sandy area known as El Arenal, one of the most picturesque parts of Seville, which stretched from the city walls down to the Guadalquivir, with Triana on the farther shore; at the sails on the sardine boats and the shrimpers, and at all the other little boats coming and going; at the king’s galleys moored over by Triana, which was crammed with vessels as far as the pontoon; at El Altozano and the sinister castle that was the seat of the Inquisition; at the crowd of great ships on the nearer shore: a forest of masts, spars, lateen yards, sails, and flags; at the swarms of people, the tradesmen’s stalls, the bundles of merchandise; I could hear the hammering of ship’s carpenters, see the smoke from the caulkers’ tar barrels, and the pulleys on the great naval crane at the mouth of the Tagarete that was used to careen the ships’ bottoms.The Basques in the north send us wood,

And cloth and iron and ships true and good,

And the sailor brings from the brave new world

Ambergris, pearls, silver and gold,

And skins and strange exotic dyes,

And everything else that money buys.

Lope de Vega’s play El Arenal de Sevilla, from which these lines came, had remained engraved on my memory ever since I first saw it with Captain Alatriste at the open-air theater of El Principe when I was a mere boy, on the famous day when Buckingham and the Prince of Wales fought alongside him. And suddenly, that place, that city that was, in itself, so splendid, was made magical and marvelous. Angelica de Alquezar was there, and I might perhaps see her. I gave a sideways glance at my master, fearful that my inner turbulence might be visible from without. Fortunately, Diego Alatriste had more worrying things on his mind. He was studying the accountant Olmedilla, who had finished his business and was walking toward us, eyeing us about as cordially as if we had come to administer the last rites. Grave-faced and dressed entirely in black, apart from his white ruff, and wearing a narrow-brimmed black hat unadorned by any feather, and with that curious sparse beard that only accentuated his gray, mouselike appearance, he had the pinched air of one plagued by acid humors and bad digestion.

“What do we need with this fool?” muttered the captain, as he watched him approach.

Quevedo shrugged. “He’s been given a mission to fulfill. The count-duke himself is pulling the strings. And Master Olmedilla’s work will discomfit quite a number of people.”

Olmedilla greeted us with a curt nod, and we followed him to the Triana gate. Alatriste was speaking to Quevedo in a low voice: “What exactly does he do?”

The poet responded equally softly: “As I said, he’s an accountant, an expert at balancing books. A man who knows everything there is to know about figures, about customs duties and suchlike. Why, he could outshine the mathematician Juan de Leganes.”

“Has someone been stealing more than he should?”

“There is always someone stealing more than he should.”

The broad brim of Alatriste’s hat cast a mask of shadow over his face, a mask that only emphasized the paleness of his eyes, with the light and the landscape of El Arenal reflected in them. “And where exactly do we fit in with all of this?” he asked.

“I’m only acting as intermediary. I am currently much in favor at court. The king requires me to be witty, and the queen laughs at my jokes. As for the count-duke, I do him the occasional small favor, and he repays me in kind.”

“I’m glad to see that Fortune is finally smiling on you.”

“Don’t speak too loudly. Fortune has played so many tricks on me in the past, I view her very warily indeed.”

Alatriste observed the poet, amused. “Nevertheless, don Francisco, you certainly look every inch the courtier.”

“Oh, please, Captain!” Quevedo was tugging at his ruff where it irritated his skin. “Being an artist and enjoying regular hot meals are two activities that are rarely compatible. I am simply having a run of good luck at the moment: I’m popular and my poetry is being read everywhere. As usual, I even have attributed to me poems I did not write, including some monstrosities by that bugger, that Babylonian, that sodomite Gongora, whose grandparents spurned bacon and worked as cobblers in Cordoba, and whose ‘letters patent’ you’ll find hanging from the Cathedral ceiling, along with the names of other Jews. Indeed, I have just hailed his latest published work with a delicate little poem of my own, which ends thus:“Be not flatulent,

Vilest of sewers,

Through which Parnassus

Purges its excrement!

“But to return to more serious matters. As I was saying, it’s convenient to the count-duke to have me on his side. He flatters me and uses me. As for your involvement in the matter, Captain, that is a mere caprice on the part of the count-duke himself. For some reason, he remembers you. Given that we’re talking about Olivares, that, of course, could be a good thing or a bad. Perhaps, in this instance, it’s good. Besides, you did once offer him the