“I’m afraid you’re not your usual handsome self,” he commented drily.
The light hurt Alatriste’s eyes, and when he blinked, he realized that his left eye was so badly swollen he could barely open it. Nevertheless, he could still see his enemy’s pockmarked face and the scar above his right eyelid, a souvenir of their fight on board the Niklaasbergen.
“I could say the same of you,” he said.
Malatesta’s mouth twisted into an almost conspirato rial smile.
“I’m sorry about this,” he said, looking at Alatriste’s bound hands. “Is the rope very tight?”
“Pretty tight, yes.”
“I thought so. Your hands are about the size and color of aubergines.”
He turned toward the door and called out. A man appeared. Alatriste recognized him as the man he had almost bumped into in Galapagar. Malatesta ordered him to slacken the rope binding Alatriste’s hands. While the man was doing this, Malatesta took out his dagger and held it to Alatriste’s throat, just to make sure that the captain didn’t take advantage of the situation. Then the man left, and they were alone again.
“Are you thirsty?”
“What do you think?”
Malatesta sheathed his dagger and held the wineskin to the captain’s lips, letting him drink as much as he wanted. He was observing him intently. By the light of the lantern, Alatriste could, in turn, study the Italian’s hard, dark eyes.
“Now, tell me what this is all about,” he said.
Malatesta’s smile broadened. It was, thought the captain, a smile that seemed to counsel Christian resignation, which, given the circumstances, was hardly encouraging. Malatesta thoughtfully probed one ear with his finger, as if carefully considering which word or words to use.
“Basically, you’re done for,” he said at last.
“And are you the one who’s going to kill me?”
Malatesta shrugged, as if to say: “What does it matter who kills you?”
“Yes, I suppose I will be,” he said.
“On whose behalf?”
Malatesta slowly shook his head, still not taking his eyes off the captain, but did not reply. Then he got to his feet and picked up the lantern.
“You have some old enemies,” he said, going over to the door.
“Aside from you, you mean?”
The Italian gave a harsh laugh.
“I’m not your enemy, Captain Alatriste, I’m your adversary. Do you not know the difference? An adversary respects you even if he stabs you in the back. Enemies are something else entirely. An enemy loathes you, even though he may praise and embrace you.”
“Cut the philosophy, please. You’re going to slit my throat and leave me to die like a dog.”
Malatesta, who was about to close the door, stopped for a moment, his head slightly bowed. He seemed to be hesitating over whether to add anything further or not.
“Well, ‘dog’ is perhaps a trifle strong,” he said at last, “but it will do.”
“Bastard.”
“Don’t be too upset about it. Remember the other day . . . in my house. And, by way of consolation, I will just say that you’ll be in illustrious company.”
“What do you mean, ‘illustrious’?”
“Guess.”
Alatriste put two and two together. The Italian was waiting at the door, circumspect and patient.
“You can’t be serious,” blurted out the captain.
“In the words of my compatriot Dante,” replied Malatesta, ‘Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda.’ From a little spark may burst a mighty flame.”
“The king again?”
This time Malatesta did not reply. He merely smiled more broadly at Alatriste’s look of stupefaction.
“Well, that doesn’t console me in the least,” replied Alatriste, once he had recovered his composure.
“It could be worse. For you, I mean. You’re about to make history.”
Alatriste ignored the comment. He was still considering the really important question.
“According to you, then, someone still has one too many kings in the pack, and I’ve been chosen as the one to discard that king.”
As Malatesta was closing the door, Alatriste heard him laugh again.
“I said no such thing, Captain. But at least I’ll know that when I do kill you, no one will be able to say that I’m dispatching an innocent or an imbecile.”
“I love you,” Angélica said again.
I couldn’t see her face in the darkness. I was gradually coming to, waking from a delicious dream during which I had not, for one moment, lost consciousness. She still had her arms about me, and I could feel my heart beating against her satiny, half-naked flesh. I opened my mouth to utter those identical words, but all that emerged was a startled, exhausted, happy moan. After this, I thought confusedly, no one will ever be able to part us.
“My boy,” she said.
I buried my face in her disheveled hair, and then, after running my fingers over the soft curve of her hips, kissed the hollow above her shoulder blade, where the ribbons of her half-open chemise hung loose. The night wind was whistling in the roofs and chimneys of the palace. The room and the rumpled bed were a haven of calm. Everything else was excluded, suspended, apart from our two young bodies embracing in the darkness and the now slowing beat of my heart. And I suddenly realized, as if it were a revelation, that I had made that whole long journey—my childhood in Oñate, the time I had spent in Madrid, in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and in Flanders, Seville, and Sanlúcar—that I had survived all those hazards and dangers in order to become a man and to be there that night, in the arms of Angélica de Alquézar, that girl who, although only about the same age as me, was calling me “her boy,” and whose warm, mysterious flesh seemed to hold the key to my destiny.
“Now you’ll have to marry me,” she murmured, “one day . . .”
She said this in a tone that was both serious and ironic, in a voice that trembled strangely in a way that reminded me of the leaves on a tree. I nodded sleepily, and she kissed my lips. This kept at bay a thought that was trying to make its way through my consciousness, like a distant noise, rather like the wind blowing in the night. I tried to focus on that noise, but Angélica’s mouth and her embrace were stopping me. I stirred uneasily. There was something wrong. A memory of foraging in enemy territory near Breda surfaced in my mind. I recalled how that apparently tranquil green landscape of windmills, canals, woods, and undulating fields could unexpectedly unleash on you a detachment of Dutch cavalry. The thought returned, more intense this time. An echo, an image. Suddenly the wind howled more loudly outside the shutter, and I remembered. The captain’s face. A lightning flash, an explosion of panic. The captain’s face. Of course. Christ’s blood!
I sat up, detaching myself from Angélica’s arms. The captain had not kept his appointment, and there I was in bed, indifferent to his fate, plunged in the most absolute of oblivions.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I did not reply. I placed my feet on the cold floor and began groping in the darkness for my clothes. I was completely naked.
“Where are you going?”
I found my shirt and picked up my breeches and my doublet. Angélica had left the bed too, but was no longer asking questions. She tried to grab me from behind, but I pushed her roughly away. We struggled in the dark. Eventually I heard her fall back on the bed with a moan of pain or perhaps anger. I didn’t care. At that moment, all I cared about was the anger I felt against myself, the anguish of my desertion.
“You wretch,” she said.
I crouched down again, feeling about on the floor. My shoes must be there somewhere. I found my leather belt and was going to put it on when I noticed that it was not as heavy as it should be. The sheath for my dagger was empty. “Where the hell is it?” I thought. I was about to ask that question out loud, a question that already sounded foolish before it had even reached my lips, when I felt a sharp, very cold pain in my back, and the
surrounding blackness filled up with luminous dots, like tiny stars. I uttered one loud, brief scream. Then I tried to turn and strike my attacker, but my strength failed me and I dropped to my knees. Angélica was holding on to my hair, forcing my head back. I was aware of blood running down the back of my thighs and then felt the blade of the dagger at my throat. With a strange lucidity I thought: “She’s going to slit my throat as if I were a calf or a pig.” I had read once about a witch, a woman who, in antiquity, used to change men into pigs.
She dragged me back onto the bed, tugging at my hair, keeping the dagger pressed to my throat, forcing me to lie down again, this time on my stomach. Then she sat astride me, half naked as she was, her thighs gripping my waist. She still had a firm hold on my hair. Then she removed the dagger from my throat, and I felt her lips on my still bleeding wound, felt her licking the edges, kissing it just as she had kissed my mouth.
“I’m so glad,” she whispered, “that I haven’t killed you just yet.”
The light was paining Diego Alatriste’s eyes, or, rather, his right eye, because his left was still swollen, and both eyelids felt as heavy as loaded dice. This time, he saw two shadows moving about near the door of his cell. He sat looking at them from his position on the floor, his back against the wall, having failed to free his bound hands, despite almost rubbing the skin raw in his efforts.
“Do you recognize me?” asked a dour voice.
The man was lit now by the lantern. Alatriste recognized him at once, with a shiver of fear and surprise that must, he thought, have been evident on his face. Who could forget that vast tonsure, that gaunt, ascetic face, those fanatical eyes, the stark black-and-white Dominican habit? Fray Emilio Bocanegra, president of the Court of the Inquisition, was the last man he would have expected to meet there.
“Now,” said the captain, “I really am done for.”
Behind the lantern, Gualterio Malatesta gave a harsh, appreciative laugh. The Inquisitor, however, lacked any sense of humor. His piercing, deep-set eyes fixed on the captain.
“I have come to confess you,” he said.
Alatriste shot an astonished look in the direction of Malatesta’s dark silhouette, but this time the Italian neither laughed nor commented. This offer of confession was clearly intended seriously, too seriously.
“You are a mercenary and a murderer,” the Inquisitor went on. “During your unfortunate life, you have broken each and every one of God’s commandments, and now you are about to be called to account.”
The captain finally recovered the use of his tongue, which had stuck to the roof of his mouth when he heard the word “confession.” Surprising even himself, he managed to keep his composure.
“My accounts,” he retorted, “are my own affair.”
Fray Emilio Bocanegra regarded him impassively, as if he had not heard that last remark.
“Divine Providence,” he went on, “is offering you the chance to reconcile yourself with God, to save your soul, even if you must then spend hundreds of years in Purgatory. In a few hours’ time, the holy swords of the archangel and of Joshua will fall and you will have been transformed into an instrument of God. You can decide whether to go to your death with your heart closed to God’s grace or to accept it with goodwill and a clear conscience. Do you understand?”
The captain shrugged. It was one thing for them to kill him and quite another to come bothering his head with such stuff. He could still not fathom what Bocanegra was doing there.
“One thing I do understand is that today is not a Sunday, so please spare me the sermon and tell me what is going on.”
Fray Emilio Bocanegra fell silent for a moment, but his eyes remained fixed on the prisoner. Then he raised one bony, admonitory finger.
“Very shortly, the world will know that a hired killer named Diego Alatriste, acting out of jealousy for some vile imitator of Jezebel, liberated Spain of a king unworthy to wear the crown. A base instrument wielded by God for a just cause.”
The friar’s eyes were flashing now, aflame with divine wrath. And Alatriste’s suspicions were finally confirmed. He, Alatriste, was to be the holy sword of Joshua, or would, at least, pass into the history books as such.
“The ways of the Lord are unknowable,” commented Malatesta, who was standing behind the friar and saw that the captain had finally understood.
He sounded almost encouraging, persuasive, respectful. Too respectful, thought Alatriste, knowing as he did the depths of Malatesta’s cynicism. Malatesta must have been enjoying this absurd little interlude immensely. Grave-faced, the Dominican half turned toward the Italian, and the latter’s derisive comment died on his lips. In the presence of the Inquisitor, even Gualterio Malatesta did not dare overstep.
“Just what I needed,” said the captain with a sigh. “To fall into the hands of a mad friar.”
The slap was as loud as a whiplash and flung his face to one side.
“Hold your tongue, wretch.” The Dominican still held his hand high, threatening to slap him again. “This is your last chance before you face eternal damnation.”
The captain looked again at Fray Emilio Bocanegra. His cheek smarted from the blow, and he was not the kind of man to turn the other cheek. Despair formed a knot in the pit of his stomach. “By Lucifer’s balls,” he said to himself, repressing his anger. Up until that night, no one had ever slapped him in the face—ever. By Christ and the father who engendered him, he would gladly have sold his soul, always assuming he had one, just to have his hands free for a moment to strangle this friar. He glanced over at the black shape that was Malatesta, still concealed behind the lantern. No laughter and no jocular remarks emerged from him now. That slap had not pleased him one iota. Among their kind, killing was one thing—part of the job—but humiliation was another matter entirely.
“Who else is involved in this?” Alatriste asked, pulling himself together. “Besides Luis de Alquézar, of course. One doesn’t just kill a king like that. An heir is needed, and our king has not yet had a son.”
“The natural order will be followed,” the Dominican said coolly.
So that was it, thought Alatriste, biting his lip. The natural order of succession would fall on the Infante don Carlos, the eldest of the king’s two brothers. It was said that he was the least gifted of the family, and that given his weak will and lack of intelligence, he could easily fall under the influence of the right confessor for the purpose. Despite his youthful licentiousness, Philip IV was nevertheless a devout man; however, unlike his father, Philip III, who spent all his life beset by priests, he never gave the clergy a free hand. On the advice of the Count-Duke of Olivares, the Spanish king always maintained a certain distance from Rome, whose pontiffs knew, much to their regret, that the Hapsburg army was the main Catholic bulwark against the Protestant heretics. Like Olivares, the young king showed some sympathy for the Jesuits, but in a land where one hundred thousand priests and friars and monks were ever battling it out amongst themselves for control of men’s souls and of ecclesiastical privileges, it was neither easy nor advisable to come down in favor of any one group. The Jesuits were hated by the Dominicans, who ran the Holy Office of the Inquisition and were the implacable enemies of the Franciscans and Augustinians, yet they all joined forces when it came to eluding royal authority and justice. In that struggle for power, driven by fanaticism, pride, and ambition, it was hardly surprising that the Dominican order, and, of course, the Inquisition, enjoyed an excellent relationship with the Infante don Carlos. And it was no secret that he, in turn, favored them to the extent of having chosen a Dominican as his confessor. If it was red and served in a jug, Alatriste decided, it must be wine. Or blood.
“If the infante involves himself in this,” he said, “he’s an utter rogue.”
Making a gesture as if brushing away a fly, Fray Emilio Bocanegra resorted to professional rhetoric:
“The right hand does not always know what the left hand is doing. What matters is that we serve the Almighty, and that is our so
le aim.”
“It will cost you your heads—you, that Italian over there, Alquézar, and the infante himself.”
“Worry about your own head,” remarked Malatesta phlegmatically.
“Rather,” added the Inquisitor, “worry about the health of your soul.” Again his terrible eyes fixed on Alatriste. “Will you make your confession to me?”
The captain leaned back against the wall. It would have to have happened some time, but it was grotesque that it had to be like this. Diego Alatriste, regicide. That isn’t how he wanted to be remembered by the few friends who would be likely to remember him in a tavern or a trench. It would be worse, though, he concluded, to end up ill and dying in a hospital for veterans, or else crippled and begging for alms at the door of a church. At least in his case, Malatesta would act cleanly and quickly. They couldn’t risk him blabbing on the rack.
“I’d rather confess to the devil. I know him better.”
He heard the Italian spluttering in the background in spontaneous laughter, which was interrupted by a fierce look from Fray Emilio Bocanegra. Then the Inquisitor studied Alatriste’s face long and hard, finally shaking his head, as if handing down a sentence against which there could be no appeal. He got to his feet, smoothing his robes.
“So be it. The devil and you, face-to-face.”
He left, followed by Malatesta bearing the lantern. The door closed behind them like a tombstone closing over a tomb.
We rehearse our death in sleep, which serves us as both rest and warning. I was never more aware of the truth of these words than when I emerged, bathed in an unwholesome sweat, from a strange half-sleep, a state of unconsciousness filled with images, like some kind of slow nightmare. I was lying facedown and naked on the bed, and my back hurt me terribly. It was still night. Always assuming, I thought with some alarm, that it was the same night. When I felt for my wound, I found my torso swathed in a bandage. I moved cautiously, making sure that I was alone. The memory of what had happened rose up inside me—beautiful and terrible. Then I remembered Captain Alatriste and wondered what fate he might have met.