Purity of Blood

Vicuña’s watering hole was in a cellar on Cava de San Miguel, very close to the Plaza Mayor; and in it, deals of every sort allowed by the mandates of our lord and king were struck, and also, as Your Mercies may have adjudged, others, scarcely concealed, that were not. The variety was as diverse as the players’ imaginations, which in that day was considerable. They were playing ombre, polla, and one hundred—games that bled you slowly—as well as seven-up, reparólo, and others referred to as “quick and slick” because of the speed with which they left a man without money, speech, or breath. About them, the great Lope had written:

Like drawing out his swordfor one who has occasion,so the game is the persuasionfor one who seeks reward.

True that only a few months before, a royal decree had been issued prohibiting gaming houses, for our fourth Philip was young, well-intentioned, and—amply aided by his pious confessor—he believed in things such as the dogma of the Virgin Mary, the Catholic cause in Europe, and the moral regeneration of his subjects in the Old and New Worlds. Forbidding gambling, like the attempt to close the bawdyhouses, however—not to mention hopes for the Catholic cause in Europe—was wishing for the sky. Because if anything besides theater, running the bulls in the plazas, and something else I will mention in good time, impassioned Spaniards living beneath the rule of the Austrian monarchy, it was gambling.

Towns of three thousand inhabitants wore out eighteen thousand packs of cards each year, and card games were as often played in the streets—where sharps, cheats, and shills improvised games in which to fleece the naive—as they were in legal or clandestine houses, jails, brothels, taverns, and guardposts. Important cities like Madrid and Seville were anthills of meddlers and idlers with coins in their purses, ready to join in around the desencuadernada—the book without a binding, which was what a packet of cards was called—or a Juan Tarafe, a name the lowlife gave to dice games. Everyone gambled, common people and nobility, gentlemen and rogues; even ladies, who though they were not admitted into dens like Juan Vicuña’s, were assiduous patrons of the better gaming houses, as well versed in clubs, trumps, and points as the next one. And as may be expected of a violent, proud, and quick-to-draw-steel people like we were, and are, quarrels born of a game often ended with a “God’s bones!” and a fine collection of stab wounds.

Vicuña made it across the room, though not before carefully eyeing some scholars of the art, which is what he called the charlatans expert in palming and marking cards, men who always had a winner up their sleeves, heedful of where it fell. He also stopped to give a warm greeting to don Raúl de la Poza, an hidalgo from a very wealthy Cuenca family, a black sheep with a taste for the spicier side of life, who was one of his best clients. A man of fixed habits, don Raúl had just arrived, as he did every night, from a brothel on Calle Francos—where he was a regular—and now would not leave until dawn, in time to attend seven-o’clock mass at San Ginés. Escudos were scudding across his table like sea foam on a stormy day, and always churning around him was a court of swindlers and sycophants who snuffed his candles for him, served his wine, and even brought a urinal if he was deep into the game and did not want to abandon a good hand. All in exchange for the barato, the real-or-two tip that came their way after every useful service.

That night, de la Poza was in the company of the Marqués de Abades and other friends. That made Vicuña feel easier, for it was a rare day that three or four swaggering churls were not waiting to relieve de la Poza of his winnings as he left.