Purity of Blood

He was picturing himself dead, or a slave—more the former than the latter—when a few soldiers who were holding out in a group and firing themselves up by shouting “Spain! Spain! All for Spain!” heard his cries for help over the roar of harquebus fire. Two or three came to his aid, splashing through the mud and knifing Arabs right and left. One of the rescuers was a soldier with an enormous mustache and gray-green eyes, who, after slashing a Moor’s face with his pike, put one arm around young Guadalmedina’s shoulders and dragged him through mud red with blood toward the boats and galleys anchored near the beach. Once there, they still had to battle, with Guadalmedina bleeding on the sand amid flying shot and arrows and flashing blades, until the soldier with the light eyes could finally pull the injured man into the water, load him onto his back, and carry him to the skiff of the last galley. Behind them they could hear the yells of the poor wretches who had not escaped, but were murdered or captured for slaves on that fateful beach.

Guadalmedina was looking into those same eyes now, in Juan Vicuña’s little room. And—as sometimes happens, but always in generous souls—throughout the years that had passed since that bloody day, Álvaro de la Marca had not forgotten his debt. And the debt was even greater when he learned that the soldier to whom he owed his life—the one whose comrades called him captain out of respect, though he had not earned that rank—had fought in Flanders under the banners of his father, Conde Fernando de la Marca. It was a debt, however, that Diego Alatriste never called due except in extreme cases, such as the recent adventure of the two Englishmen. And now, when my life was at stake.

“Returning to our Íñigo,” Guadalmedina continued, “if he does not testify against you, Alatriste, the matter stops there. But he is in custody, and seemingly they expect him to incriminate you. Which makes him a prize prisoner of the Inquisition.”

“What can they do to him?”

“They can do anything. They are going to burn the girl at the stake, as sure as Christ is God. As for him, it depends. He could be freed after a few years in prison, after two hundred lashes, or after being made to wear the cone hat of infidels…or who knows what? But the risk of the stake is real.”

“And what about Olivares?” don Francisco put in.

Guadalmedina made a vague gesture. He had recovered his pipe and was puffing on it, eyes half closed against the smoke.

“He has received the message and will consider the matter, although we must not expect too much from him. If he has something to say, he will let us know.”

“Pardiez! This is not a minor matter,” don Francisco grumbled.

Guadalmedina turned to the poet with a faint frown. “His Majesty’s favorite has other matters to attend to.”

He said it rather tartly. Álvaro de la Marca admired the poet’s talent, and respected him as the captain’s friend. They also had friends in common—both had been in Naples with the Duque de Osuna. But the aristocrat was a poet himself in moments of leisure, and it smarted when he thought that this Señor de la Torre de Juan Abad did not appreciate his verses. And still more that Quevedo had been unimpressed when in hopes of winning his approval, Guadalmedina had dedicated a poem to him that was one of the best to come from his quill, the well-known lines that begin,

Behind good Roch, lame supplicant…

The captain was paying no attention to them, intent on unwrapping the packet the aristocrat had brought. Álvaro de la Marca, puffing his pipe, watched closely.

“Use them with caution, Alatriste,” he said finally.

The captain did not reply. He was examining the objects Guadalmedina had brought. On the wrinkled blanket lay a map and two keys.

The cauldron of the Prado gardens was boiling. It was the evening rúa, the time of the stylized social parade. Carriages driving from the Guadalajara gate and the Calle Mayor tarried between the fountains and beneath the poplar groves as the setting sun painted the roof tiles of Madrid. The area from the corner of Calle Alcalá to San Jerónimo road was a mass of covered and open coaches, cavaliers who had checked their horses to chat with the ladies, duennas in their nunlike white headgear, aproned servant girls, pages, hawkers selling Caño Dorado water and mead, and women peddling fruit, small pots of custard, jars of conserves, and sweets.