Purity of Blood

At last the captain was in the corridor, but only in time to spy three or four servants running up the steps brandishing their weapons. It was a bad scenario. So bad that he pulled out his pistol and fired point-blank at the men on the stairway, a confused tangle of legs, arms, swords, bucklers, and clubs. Before they had time to regroup, he ran back into the room, shot the bolt of the door, and sped like an exhalation toward the window, but not before dodging two thrusts of Alquézar’s sword and, for the third, unholy time, finding the girl clinging like a leech to his arm, biting and clawing with a ferocity unsuspected in a girl of twelve. Somehow the captain reached the window, kicked open the shutter, and slit the nightshirt of Alquézar, who was staggering clumsily toward the bed, covering himself. As Alatriste threw one leg over the iron balcony he was still shaking his arm and trying to loose Angélica’s hold. The blue eyes and tiny white teeth, which don Luis de Góngora—begging Señor de Quevedo’s pardon—had described as aljófares, minute pearls set between lips like rose petals, were flashing with exceptional ferocity, until Alatriste, now fed to his

teeth with the whole matter, grabbed her by her curly locks and pulled her off his martyred arm, tossing her through the air like a furious, screaming rag doll. She landed upon her uncle and both of them crashed onto the bed, which spread its legs and collapsed noisily to the floor.

At that point, the captain dropped from the window, ran across the patio and out to the street. He did not stop running until he had left that nightmare far behind.

Alatriste stayed in the shelter of the shadows, seeking the darkest streets by which to return to Juan Vicuña’s gaming house. He went down Cava Alta and Cava Baja, along Posada de la Villa and past the shuttered shop of the apothecary Fadrique, before crossing Puerta Cerrada, where at that early hour not a soul was stirring.

He did not want to think, but it was inevitable that he would. He was certain of having committed a stupid act that only made a bad situation worse. A cold rage pounded in his pulse and blood hammered at his temples, and he would gladly have beat himself in the face to give vent to his desperation and his anger. It was the impulse to do something, not to keep waiting for others to act for him—he told himself once he had recovered a little calm—that had brought him out of his den like a desperate wolf, on the hunt for he knew not what.

It was not like him. Life, however long it lasted, was much simpler when there was no one to look out for but oneself. It was a difficult world in which every day a throat was slit, and nobody had any responsibility but to keep one’s own skin and life intact. Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, veteran of the tercios of Flanders and galleys of Naples, had spent long years ridding himself of any sentiment he could not resolve with a sword. But now look where he was. A boy whose name he had not even known a short while ago was turning everything upside down, making him aware that every man, however able-bodied he may be, has chinks in his armor.

And speaking of chinks. Alatriste felt his left forearm, still aching from Angélica’s bites, and could not prevent a grimace of admiration. At times, tragedies have all the earmarks of burlesque, he told himself. That tiny blond cat, of whom he had heard only vague references—though I myself had never mentioned her name, and the captain knew nothing of my relationship with her—had showed uncommon promise of ferociousness, displaying bloodlines worthy of her uncle.

Finally, remembering once again Luis de Alquézar’s terrified eyes, the moist breath on the hand that had silenced him, his stench of sweat and fear, Alatriste shrugged. At last his soldier’s stoicism was taking hold. After all, he concluded, we can never foresee the consequences of our acts. At the least, following the nocturnal surprise he had just experienced, Luis de Alquézar now knew he was vulnerable. His neck was just as much at the mercy of a dagger as anyone else’s, and having seen that clearly could be as bad ultimately as it was good.

With that, the captain at last reached the small Conde de Barajas plaza, a step or two from the Plaza Mayor, and as he was about to turn the corner he saw light and a number of people. It was definitely not the hour of the paseo, so he hid in a doorway. Perhaps it was some of Juan Vicuña’s clients leaving after a nightlong skirmish with the cards, or early-morning adventurers…or the Law. Whoever it was, this was no time to meet anyone unexpectedly and risk a confrontation.