Purity of Blood

His smile had become mocking. Once or twice he looked out of the corner of his eye at his pistol, lying on the sheets. The captain had no doubt that he would use it if the opportunity arose.

“You,” said Alatriste, “are a whoreson and a viper.”

Malatesta looked at him with what seemed to be sincere surprise.

“Pardiez, Captain Alatriste. Anyone who heard you would take you for a Clarist nun.”

Silence. Keeping his finger on the trigger of the pistol, the captain took a long look around. Gualterio Malatesta’s lodgings reminded him too much of his own for him to be totally indifferent. And in a certain way, the Italian was right. They were not all that far apart.

“Is it true that you cannot move out of that bed?”

“By my faith, no.” Malatesta was now looking at him with renewed attention. “What is it? Are you looking for an excuse?” Again the white, cruel smile grew wider. “If it helps, I can tell you of the men I have dispatched posthaste, without giving them time for a ‘God help me.’ Awake, asleep, from the front, from the back—and more of the second than the first. So don’t come to me now with a crisis of conscience.” The smile gave way to a quiet little laugh, discordant, evil. “You and I are professionals.”

Alatriste looked at his enemy’s sword. The guard had as many nicks and dents as his own. Everything comes down to how the dice fall, he told himself.

“I would be grateful,” Alatriste suggested, “if you would try to grab the pistol, or that sword.”

Malatesta stared at him, hard, before slowly shaking his head no.

“Not a chance. I may lie here filleted, but I am no coward. If you want to kill me, press that trigger and it will be over. With luck, I will reach hell in time for dinner.”

“I do not like the role of executioner.”

“Then shove it up your ass. I am too weak to argue.”

He lay his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes, whistling his ti-ri-tu, ta-ta, as if the matter had been settled. Alatriste stood with his pistol in hand, as through the window came the distant tolling of church bells.

Finally, Malatesta stopped whistling. He ran his hand over his swollen eyebrows, then across his pocked and scarred face, and again looked at the captain.

“Well? What have you decided?”

Alatriste did not answer. The situation verged on the grotesque. Not even Lope would have dared put such a scene in a play, for fear that the cobbler Tabarca’s mosqueteros—those toughest critics—would stomp their feet in disapproval. He walked a little closer to the bed, studying his enemy’s wounds. They stank, and looked very bad.

“Oh, but make no mistake,” said Malatesta, believing he knew what Alatriste was thinking. “I will come out of this. We men from Palermo are tough. So just get it over with.”

Diego Alatriste wanted to dispatch the dangerous swine, who had been such a menace in his life and that of his friends. Leaving him alive was as suicidal as keeping a venomous serpent in the room where he planned to sleep. He wanted and he needed to kill Gualterio Malatesta. Not this way, however, but with steel in their hands, face to face, hearing the gasping and grunts of the fight, and the death rattle at the end.

Thinking it over, he reflected that there was really no hurry. After all, however much the Italian insisted, the two of them were not the same. Perhaps they were in God’s eyes, or the Devil’s, or man’s, but not deep inside, not in their consciences. They were equals in everything except the way they read the dice on the table. Equals, except that if the roles were reversed, Malatesta would have killed Diego Alatriste long before this, while the captain stood there with his sword sheathed, the finger on the trigger of his pistol indecisive.

The door opened, and a woman appeared on the threshold. She was still young, dressed in a blouse and dirty gray petticoats. She was carrying a basket of clean sheets and a demijohn of wine, and when she saw an intruder there she choked back a scream, sending a frightened look to Malatesta. The demijohn fell to the floor, bursting inside the woven wicker covering. She was too frightened to move or speak, and anguish filled her eyes. With one glance, Diego Alatriste knew that her fear was not for herself but for the fate of the badly wounded man on the bed. After all, the captain thought, ridiculing himself as he did, even serpents seek companionship.

He looked the woman over, taking his time. She was a spindly thing, common looking. Her youth was wearing thin, and only a certain class of life could have imposed the circles of fatigue beneath her eyes. Pardiez. She reminded him a little of Caridad la Lebrijana.