Mercilessly, they tortured Grullo,
who, with the truth at the end of a rope,
said, “It wasn’t me”—the defense
of rack and wedding day: No hope.
Or this very celebrated one:
In the house of rogues
at the foot of the gallows,
for being the cutpurse I was
they sent me into shadows.
San Ginés alley was one of the favorite sites of these refugees, and at night when they came out to get a breath of air, the alley came to life and temporary stalls were set up to satisfy the fly-by-nights’ hunger. It was a dignified assembly that evaporated as if by incantation as soon as a constable showed his face.
When Diego Alatriste arrived, there were some thirty souls in the narrow alleyway: bullies, petty thieves, a few whores settling accounts with their customers, and idlers and rabble standing around talking or drinking cheap wine from wineskins and demijohns. There was very little light—only a small lantern hanging beneath an arch at the corner of the alley. That area was almost entirely in shadow, and more than half the people present were swathed in their cloaks, so that the atmosphere, although lively with conversation, was tenebrous; entirely appropriate for the kind of appointment that brought the captain there. It was also a place where someone overly curious and inquisitive, or perhaps a constable—if he was not with a patrol and well armed—might in the blink of a “Jesus God!” find it permanently difficult to swallow.
The captain recognized don Francisco de Quevedo despite the collar drawn across his face, and casually made his way toward him. The two of them drifted off to one side, away from the lantern where the poet had been standing, cape collars up and hat brims down to the eyebrows, a look very much in style among the men in the alley.
“My friends have made inquiries,” the poet reported after their first exchange of impressions. “It seems certain that don Vicente and his sons were being watched by the Inquisition. And it smells to me as if someone seized the occasion to kill several birds with one stone. Including you, Captain.”
Then in a low voice, turning away from anyone passing by, don Francisco brought Alatriste up-to-date on everything he had been able to find out. The Holy Office, persistent and patient, very well informed by its spies regarding the de la Cruz family’s intentions, had let them proceed, hoping to catch them in flagrante. The Inquisition’s intent had not been to defend Padre Coroado, just the opposite. Now that he was under the protection of the Conde de Olivares, with whom the Inquisition was waging an undeclared war, they hoped that the scandal would discredit both the convent and its protector. In the process, they would also seize a family of conversos; a burning at the stake never harmed the prestige of the Supreme Council. The problem was that they had been unable to snatch anyone alive. Don Vicente de la Cruz and his younger son, don Luis, had paid a high price, dying in the ambush. The older son, don Jerónimo, although badly wounded, had escaped and was in hiding.
“And what about us?” asked Alatriste.
Light glanced off the poet’s glasses as he shook his head. “No names have been revealed. It was so dark that no one recognized us. And anyone who was near enough to recognize us is in no condition to tell.”
“Nevertheless, they know that we were involved.”
“They may.” Don Francisco made a vague gesture. “But they have no legal proof. As for me, I am beginning once again to bask in the favor of the king and the king’s favorite, Olivares, and as long as I am not caught with my hands in the dough, it will be difficult to do anything to me.” He paused, preoccupied. “As for you, my friend, I do not know what to say. They hope to find something that will indicate your guilt. Or they may be quietly looking for you.”
Two ruffians and a prostitute walked by, arguing heatedly, and don Francisco and the captain moved out of their way, closer to the wall.
“And what has happened to Elvira de la Cruz?”
The poet sighed despondently. “Arrested. The poor girl will bear the worst of it. She is in the secret dungeons in Toledo, and I fear that there will be a burning.”
“And Íñigo?”
The pause stretched into silence. Alatriste’s voice had sounded cool, and void of emotion. He had left me for last. Don Francisco glanced around at the people chatting and strolling in the shadows of the alleyway. He turned to his friend.
“He, too, is in Toledo.” He fell silent, and shook his head with a gesture of impotence. “They caught him near the convent.”
Alatriste said nothing for a long while, watching the movement around him. From the nearby corner came the notes of a guitar.
“He is only a boy,” he said finally. “We must get him out of there.”
“Impossible. You should put your energies toward not joining him there. I imagine that they are counting on his testimony to incriminate us.”
“They would not dare mistreat him.”
Behind the heavy collar, don Francisco laughed his sour, mirthless laugh. “The Inquisition, Captain, dares all things.”
“Then we have to do something.”
He said it very coldly, obstinately, his eyes focused on the end of the passageway, where the guitar continued to play. Don Francisco looked in the same direction.
“I agree,” the poet put in. “But know not what.”
“You have friends at court.”
“I have marshaled them all. I have not forgotten that it was I who got you into this.”
The captain raised a listless hand, brushing away don Francisco’s guilt. It was reasonable that as a friend he expected the poet to do anything in his power to help; it was another matter to blame him for anything. Alatriste had collected his purse for the job, and I was, after all, his responsibility. He was silent for so long that the poet looked at him uneasily.
“Do not think of turning yourself in,” he murmured. “That would help no one, least of all yourself.”
Still Alatriste did not speak. Three or four of the refugees from justice had begun chatting nearby, with a lot of “ol’ frens,” “ol’ cumr’d,” “fine cab’lleros we”—things none of them had ever been in danger of being. They were tossing names around, fast and furious. Hellion, Devilspawn, Maniferro—a man with a hand of iron and famous in the world of Cervantes’s master criminal Monipodio. Then the captain did speak.
“Earlier,” he said in a low voice, “you said that the Inquisition wanted to get several birds with one stone. What more do you know of that?”
Don Francisco answered in the same low tone. “You. You were the fourth winged target, but they were only partly successful. The whole scheme was cooked up, it seems, by two close acquaintances of yours: Luis de Alquézar and Fray Emilio Bocanegra.”
“’Sblood!”
The poet paused, believing that the captain was going to add something to his oath, but he had nothing more to offer. He was still facing the alley, motionless behind the shelter of his cape and the hat that hid his features.
“Apparently,” don Francisco continued, “they have not forgiven you that business of the Prince of Wales and Buckingham. And now they find a golden opportunity: Padre Coroado, the convent of the king’s favorite, the family of conversos, and you yourself. What a pretty package that would make for an auto-da-fé.”
Don Francisco was interrupted by one of the ruffians, who bumped into him as he leaned back to drink from a wineskin. He turned with a great clatter of the iron at his belt, and with a very churlish attitude.
“God’s bodkins! I fear you have discommoded me, compañero!”
The poet looked at him with contempt, and stepped back. With heavy irony he recited under his breath,
You, Bernardo among the French
and amid Spaniards, Roland. Marry!
Your sword is as lethal as Galen,
and your face an apothecary.
The swaggerer heard him, however, and made a great show of demanding redress.
“God’s bones!” he said. “None of th
is Galen, or Roland, or Bernardo. I have a perfectly good name, which is Antón Novillo de la Gamella! And I am a person of worth, with the necessary tools to slice off the ears of anyone who would crowd me!”
As he spoke, he fumbled conspicuously with his weapon, though he decided not to draw it until he was sure of his cards. About that time his companions stepped up beside him, also itching for a fight, planting their feet wide apart with great sword clankings and mustache twistings. They were the sort who so prided themselves on being cocks that to hear themselves crow they would confess to things they had never done. Among them they could have knifed a onearmed man in a breath, but that man was not don Francisco. Alatriste watched the poet pull his dagger from the back of his belt and gather his heavy cape to protect his torso. Alatriste was preparing to do the same—castanets were setting the rhythm for a lively dance—when one of the swaggerer’s comrades, a mountain of a man wearing a huntsman’s cap and a baldric a hand-width’s wide across his chest to support an enormous sword, said: “Two hundred slices off these señores, comrades. Here, men do not live to a ripe old age, but are picked green.”
He had more pips and pocks on his face than a music score, and he had the accent and look of the ruffians that hang around del Potro plaza in Córdoba—Valencian whore, Cordovan rogue, was the old saying—and he, too, was making a move toward lightening his scabbard, though he did not carry it through. He was waiting for yet one more colleague to join them, for even though they were four against two, he still did not seem to feel it was an even match.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, Diego Alatriste burst out laughing.
“Here, now, Cagafuego,” he said, with festive sarcasm. “Grant us some slack. Do not kill this caballero and me outright, only a little at a time. For old times’ sake.”
Stupefied, the hulking brute stood staring at Alatriste, abashed, trying in the black of night to recognize the speaker in the dark cloak. Finally, he scratched his brow beneath the cap he wore pulled down to eyebrows so thick they seemed one straight line.
“By our Blessed Virgin,” he murmured finally. “If it’s not Captain Alatriste.”
“The same,” he replied. “The last time we met it was in the shadow of a cell.”
The reference to that “last time” was accurate. The captain had been sent to the city prison for debts, where as his first bit of business he had held a slaughterer’s knife to the throat of this Cagafuego named Bartolo, who passed as the toughest among the prisoners. That had confirmed Diego Alatriste’s reputation as a man with something substantial between his legs, along with the respect of Cagafuego and the other prisoners. A respect he turned to loyalty when he shared with them the stews and bottles of wine Caridad la Lebrijana and his friends sent to comfort his stay in his inhospitable lodgings. Even after he was free, Alatriste had continued to offer a helping hand from time to time.
“You were clubbing sardines for a while, were you not, Señor Cagafuego? At least, if I remember correctly, that is where you were heading.”
The attitude of Cagafuego’s companions had changed—including Antón Novillo de la Gamella’s—and now they were listening with professional curiosity and a certain consideration, as if the deference their friend in crime showed this cloaked man was a better recommendation than a papal brief. As for Cagafuego, he seemed pleased that Alatriste was so well informed about his recent honors.
“Why, yes, Captain, that is indeed so,” he replied, and his tone had warmed considerably from that of the two hundred slices promised shortly before. “And I would still be there in the king’s galleys as strokesman, hands to oars, rowing to the music of the shackles and whips, were it not for my saint, Blasa Pizorra. She services a scribe, and between the two of them, they softened up the judge.”
“And why are you here now? Or are you visiting?”
“Seeking refuge, by my faith, refuge,” he lamented, not without resignation. “For three days ago, we—I and my comrades here—in good Catalan fashion separated the soul from a catchpole and fled here to the church until everything blows over. Or until my fine bawd can scrape together a few ducats. For as you know, YerM’cy, the only justice is the justice you buy.”
“I am happy to see you.”
In the darkness, Bartolo Cagafuego’s lips turned upward in something resembling a huge, friendly smile.
“And I am happy to see YerM’cy looking so well. ’Pon my oath, I am at your service here in San Ginés, no lily livers here, and I bring this good ventilator”—he patted his sword, which clinked against dagger and poniards—“to serve God and my comrades, and to carve a few holes in someone these early morning hours, should we need to.”
He looked toward Quevedo with a conciliatory nod, and turned back to the captain, touching two fingers to his cap. “And forgive the error.”
Two trollops came running by, holding up their petticoats as they ran. The guitar at the corner stopped in mid-chord, and a wave of uneasiness stirred the rabble in the alley. Everyone turned to look.
“The Law! The Law!” someone shouted.
From around the corner came the hue and cry of constables and catchpoles. There were shouts of “Hold there!” and “I said Hold there, by God,” and then came the well-known warnings of “In the name of the King.” The pale light of the lantern was doused as the parishioners scattered at lightning speed: the refugees into the church and the rest emptying the alley and Calle Mayor. And in less time than it takes to dispatch a soul, there was not a shadow left behind.
Diego Alatriste retraced his steps down Cava de San Miguel and made a broad circle around the Plaza Mayor to reach the Tavern of the Turk. Standing motionless on the opposite side of the street for a long while, hidden in darkness, he observed the closed shutters and lighted window on the second floor where Caridad la Lebrijana made her home. She was awake, or at least she had left a light on as a signal for him. I am here and I am waiting for you, the message seemed to say.
But the captain did not cross the street. Instead he waited quietly, still masked by his cape, his hat pulled low, attempting to blend into the shadows of the arcade. Calle Toledo and the corner of Calle Arcabuz were deserted, but it was impossible to know whether someone might be secretly watching from the shelter of a doorway. All he could see was the empty street and that lighted window, where he thought he saw a shadow. Perhaps La Lebrijana was awake, waiting for him. He imagined her moving about the room, with the cord of her nightdress loose across her naked, dark-skinned shoulders, and he longed for the scent of that body which, despite the many wars it had fought in other days, mercenary battles, strange hands and kisses, was still beautiful, firm, and warm, as comforting as sleep, or oblivion.
Guided by his instinct of self-preservation, he fought the desire to cross the street and bury himself in that welcoming flesh. His hand brushed the grip of the vizcaína dagger he wore over his left kidney, close to his sword, a counterweight to the pistol hidden by his cape. Again, ever cautious, he searched for the dark form of an enemy shadow. And he longed to find one.
Ever since he had learned that I was in the hands of the Inquisition, and had also learned the identity of the ones who had pulled the strings of the ambush, he had harbored a lucid, icy rage bordering on desperation, and he needed somehow to purge it. The fate of don Vicente de la Cruz and his sons, and that of the now-imprisoned novice, had become secondary. In the rules of the dangerous game in which he often pawned his own skin, that was part of the deal. In every combat there were losses and gains, and the game of life provided the same ups and downs. He assumed that from the beginning, with his usual impassivity: an acceptance that at times seemed to be indifference, but was in fact nothing other than the stoic resignation of an old soldier.
But with me it was different, if Your Mercies will allow me to find a way to say this. To Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, veteran of the tercios of Flanders and those rough and dangerous times, I represented the word “remorse.” It was not easy to coolly assign me to the list of “d
owns” resulting from a bad adventure or assault. I was his responsibility, whether he liked it or not. And just as one does not choose his friends or his women, but is instead chosen by them, life, my dead father, fate, had set me in his path. There was no way he could close his eyes to an unpleasant truth: I made him vulnerable. In the life he had chosen to live, Diego Alatriste was as much a whoreson as the next; but he was a whoreson who played according to certain rules. For that reason he was quiet, and kept to himself, which was as good a way as any other to be desperate.
And that was why he was peering into the dark shadows of the street, hoping to spot a constable lurking there, a spy, any enemy at all that he could use to calm the sensation that was griping his bowels and making him clench his teeth until his jaw hurt. He wanted to find someone and then slip toward him in the darkness, without a sound, press him against the wall, gag him with his cape, and without a single word drive his dagger into his throat until he stopped moving and the Devil took him.