Purity of Blood

Cautiously, I opened my eyes. In the dim light of the room I saw that the captain had unfastened his doublet and unbuckled his sword. Seated by the table, he was drinking in silence. The wine gurgled again and again as it was poured into the glass. He drank slowly, methodically, as if he had nothing else in the world to do. The yellowish candlelight illuminated the light blotch of his shirt, the plane of his face, his short-trimmed hair, the tip of his thick soldier’s mustache. He was silent, not moving except to drink. Behind him was the window he had opened, and I could see vague outlines of nearby rooftops and chimneys. Over them shone a single star, still, silent, cold. Alatriste stared fixedly into the void, or at his own ghosts wandering in the darkness. I knew his eyes when the wine clouded them, and I could guess how they looked at that moment: glaucous, absent. At his waist, blood was slowly soaking the bandage on his hip, staining his white shirt with red.

He seemed as resigned and alone as the star winking outside in the night.

Two days later, sun was shining on Calle de Toledo, and again the world was wide and filled with hope, and the vigor of youth was leaping in my veins. Sitting at the door of the Tavern of the Turk, practicing my penmanship with the writing materials Licenciado Calzas kept bringing me from La Provincia plaza, I was again seeing life with that optimism and that speedy recovery following misfortune that only good health and youth can give. From time to time I looked over toward the women selling vegetables in the stands across the street, the hens pecking scraps, and the ragamuffins running around among the horses and coaches, as I listened to the sound of conversations inside the tavern. I considered myself the most contented boy in the world. Even the verses I was copying seemed to me the most beautiful ever written.

The shadow that comes to end day’s reverieWill bring the dark, and close my eyelids fast,Enabling this soul of mine, at last,To slough off anguish and anxiety.

The words were don Francisco de Quevedo’s, and they had seemed so lovely when I heard him casually reciting them between sips of San Martín de Valdeiglesias, that I had asked his permission to write them out in my best hand. Don Francisco was inside with the captain and the others—the licenciado, Dómine Pérez, Juan Vicuña, and the Tuerto Fadrique—all of them celebrating with carafes of the finest, sausages and cured hares, the happy end to a bad situation, which no one mentioned explicitly but all had very much in mind. One after another they had ruffled my hair or given me an affectionate pinch on the cheek as they arrived at the tavern. Don Francisco brought me a copy of Plutarch so that I could practice my reading. The dómine brought a silver rosary, Juan Vicuña came with a bronze belt buckle he had worn in Flanders, and the Tuerto Fadrique—who was the pinchpenny of the brotherhood and little inclined to part with his money—brought an ounce of a compound from his pharmacy that he assured me was perfect for building up the blood and restoring color to a lad like myself, who had suffered so many recent travails. I was the most honored, and the happiest, boy in all the Spains, as I dipped one of Licenciado Calzas’s good goose quills into the inkwell, and continued:

That darkness, though, will not leave memoryOn that far shore where once it brightly blazed,Instead, my flame will burn through icy wavesTo flout the laws of death’s finality.