Purity of Blood

It was at that verse when, as I looked up again, my hand stopped in midair and a drop of ink fell onto my page like a tear. Up Calle de Toledo came a very familiar black coach, one with no escutcheon on the door and a stern coachman driving the two mules. Slowly, as if in a dream, I set aside paper, pen, ink, and drying sand, and stood rooted as if the carriage were an apparition that any wrong movement on my part might dispel. As the coach pulled up to where I stood, I saw the little window, which was open, with the curtains unfastened. First I saw a perfect white hand, and then the blond curls and the sky-blue eyes that Diego Velázquez later painted: the girl who had led me to within a breath of the gallows. And as the carriage rolled past the Tavern of the Turk, Angélica de Alquézar looked straight at me, in a way—I swear by all that is holy—that sent a chill from the tip of my spine to my bewitched and furiously pounding heart. On an impulse, without considering what I was doing, I placed my hand on my chest, honestly and truly lamenting that I was not wearing the gold chain with the amulet that she had given me to ensure a sentence of death, and which, had the Holy Office not taken it from me, I swear by Christ’s blood I would have continued to wear around my neck with besotted pride.

Angélica understood the gesture. Her smile, that diabolic expression I so adored, lighted her lips. And then with a fingertip, she brushed them in something very like a kiss. And Calle de Toledo, and Madrid—the entire sphere—vibrated with a delicious harmony that made me feel jubilantly alive.

I stood watching, still as stone, long after the carriage disappeared up the street. Then, choosing a new quill, I smoothed the point against my doublet and finished putting down don Francisco’s sonnet.

Soul, in which a godhead was enclosed,Veins, through which a humor’s fire arose,Marrow, the seat of earthly passion’s reign,

Will fly the body, but quiddity retain;Though ash, they will have sensibility,Be dust enamored through eternity.

It was growing dark, but not yet dark enough for a lantern. The Posada Lansquenete was situated on a filthy, stinking street derisively called Calle de la Primavera—though there was no perfume of springtime there! It was near the Lavapiés fountain, the location of the lowest taverns and wine cellars in Madrid, as well as of its most ruinous brothels. Clothes were drying on lines strung from one side of the street to the other, and through open windows came the noise of quarrels and crying babies. Horse droppings were piled at the entrance to the inn, and Diego Alatriste took care not to soil his boots when he went into the corral-like courtyard where a broken-down cart with no wheels, only bare axles, was set up on stones. After a quick glance around, he took the stairs, and after thirty or so steps, and after four or five cats had darted between his legs, he reached the top floor without challenge.

Once there, he studied the doors along the gallery. If Martín Saldaña’s information was correct, it was the last door on the right, just at the corner of the corridor. He walked in that direction, trying not to make any noise and at the same time gathering up the cape that concealed his buffcoat and pistol. Doves were cooing in the eaves, the only audible sound in that part of the house. From the floor below rose the aroma of a stew. A serving girl was humming something in the distance. Alatriste stopped, glanced around for a possible escape route, assured himself that his sword and dagger were where they should be, then pulled his pistol from his belt and, after testing the primer, thumbed back the hammer. The moment had come to settle unfinished business. He smoothed his mustache, unfastened his cape, and opened the door.

It was a miserable room that smelled of confinement, of loneliness. Some early-rising cockroaches were scurrying across the table among the remains of a meal, like looters after a battle. There were two empty bottles, a water jug, and chipped glasses. Dirty clothes were slung over a chair, a urinal sat in the middle of the floor, a black doublet, hat, and cape hung on the wall. There was one bed, with a sword at its head. And in the bed was Gualterio Malatesta.