Purity of Blood (5 page)

“Perhaps.”

The poet did not seem convinced, and Alatriste’s lips again twisted with irony.

“What the devil, don Francisco. It is a little late for regrets, now that you’ve already got me dressed for the ball.”

Dejected, the poet took a swallow, and then another. His eyes had begun to water.

“But to turn a convent upside down,” he said, underscoring the obvious, “is not a trifling matter.”

“Nor is taking La Goleta,
pardiez!
” The captain strode to the table, where he picked up his pistol and removed the primer and charge. “They tell that my mother’s great-uncle, a man well known in the day of Charles the Fifth, broke into a convent one day in Seville.”

Don Francisco looked up, interested. “Was he one who inspired Tirso’s play?”

“So they say.”

“I was not aware that you were related.”

“Well, now you know it. Spain is a pocket handkerchief: here everyone knows everyone, and all roads cross.”

Quevedo’s eyeglasses were dangling from their cord. Thoughtful, he held them a moment but did not place them on his nose. Instead, they dropped from his fingers to again hang above the embroidered cross on his chest, and he reached instead for the wine. He drank a long, last draught, gazing lugubriously at the captain over the lip of the jug.

“Well, by the good Christ, I venture that your uncle, that trickster Don Juan, had a bad third act.”

III. MADRID STEEL

The next morning found me at mass with Diego Alatriste and Señor de Quevedo, a rather momentous event. Don Francisco, both because of his Santander heritage and his cross of Santiago, felt it a point of honor to fulfill the rituals of the Church, but the captain was not moved a hair by a
Dominus
or a
vobiscum.
It is, however, only fair to point out that for all his oaths, moderate in themselves, for all the blasphemy and By Gods, only standard in his former profession, never in all the years I spent at his side did I hear Alatriste speak a word against religion. Not even when, in the Tavern of the Turk, his friends’ controversial comments left Dómine Pérez in the middle and no maxim with a breath of life. Alatriste did not practice Catholicism but he respected tonsures, robes, and wimples in the same way that he respected the authority and the person of ourlord and king. Perhaps it was his discipline as a soldier, or it may have been the stoic indifference that seemed to govern his moods and his character. A further detail: though he so seldom attended mass himself, the captain always obliged me to pay my dues to God every Sunday and feast day, whether in the company of Caridad la Lebrijana—like all former whores, La Lebrijana was extremely pious—or Dómine Pérez. And two days a week, at Alatriste’s insistence, the good priest taught me grammar, a little Latin, and enough catechism and Sacred History that, as the captain said, no one would take me for a Turk or an accursed heretic.

He was a man of many contradictions. Not much later, in Flanders, I had occasion to see him kneeling with bowed head as the
tercios
were preparing for combat and the chaplains were going up and down the rows blessing all the men. He did not do it to affect piety but, rather, to show respect for comrades who were going off to die believing in the efficacy of the whole rigmarole. Alatriste’s God was neither placated by laud nor offended by oaths; He was a powerful and dispassionate being who did not manipulate the puppets on the stage of life, but merely observed them. And it was also He who, with reasons incomprehensible to the actors in the human comedy—why not just call it a farce—operated the stage machinery, causing lethal trapdoors to open or revolving panels to shift suddenly, sometimes imprisoning you in shackles and other times—a literal
deus ex machina
—extracting you from the most dire situations. It might all be due to that long-ago prime motion and efficient cause that Dómine Pérez mentioned one fine afternoon when he had been a bit too free with the sweet wine and was attempting to explain Saint Thomas’s five proofs to us. But as for the captain, his interpretation of the matter was possibly closer to what the Romans—if I am not deceived by the Latin I learned from that same
dómine
—called
fatum.

I remember a taciturn Alatriste, when enemy artillery was creating significant lacunae in our ranks, and all around, fellow soldiers were making the sign of the cross, commending themselves to Christ and the most blessed Virgin. Suddenly you heard them reciting prayers they had learned as children, and the captain murmuring “Amen” along with them, so they would not feel alone when they fell to the ground and died. His cold, gray-green eyes nevertheless were fixed on the undulating rows of the enemy cavalry, on the musket fire issuing from the terreplein of a dike, on the smoking bombs that snaked across the ground before exploding in a burst that left the Devil well supplied. It was evident that “Amen” did not bind him in any way, as one could read in the absorbed gaze of an old soldier attentive only to the monotonous drumroll from the center of the
tercio,
a beat as slow and calm as the tranquil pace of the Spanish infantry and the serene beating of his heart. Because Captain Alatriste served God as he served his king. He had no reason to love God, even to admire Him, but being who he was, he afforded the deity his respect.

One day when we had taken a bellyful of steel and shot on the banks of the Merck River, near Breda, I saw Alatriste do battle for a flag and the corpse of our field marshal. And I know that although he was willing to sacrifice his hide—and for good measure mine—for that dead body sieved by musket balls, he did not give a fig for either don Pedro de la Daga
or
the flag. That was what was puzzling about the captain: he could show respect for a God who did not matter to him, fight for a cause in which he did not believe, get drunk with an enemy, or die for an officer or a king he scorned.

Yes, we went to mass, although the motive was far from pious. The church, as Your Mercies will undoubtedly have suspected, was the one attached to the convent of La Adoración. Las Benitas was near the palace and almost straight across from the convent of La Encarnación, which was next to the small plaza of the same name. Las Benitas’s eight-o’clock mass was in vogue, for that was where Teresa de Guzmán, the wife of the Conde de Olivares, came to worship. Furthermore, the chaplain, don Juan Coroado, had a reputation for cutting a fine figure before the altar and preaching a fine homily from the pulpit. So the church was frequented not only by truly religious women but also by ladies of good breeding, drawn there by the Condesa de Olivares or by the chaplain, and by other women who had no breeding at all, but pretended to. Even harlots and flamboyant actresses—as pious in matters of dogma as the next—dropped in with the required devotion, thickly powdered and rouged beneath the folds of their mantillas and fine black silks, and dripping with laces from Lorraine and Provence—those from Flanders being reserved for ladies of greater substance. And since the presence of so many ladies, genteel or otherwise, drew more males than lice to a muleteer’s doublet, the famed eight-o’clock mass filled the small church from altar to atrium. Some female worshipers had eyes only for God, while others sent volleys of Cupid’s darts flying above their fans. Gallants lurked behind columns or beside the font to offer the ladies holy water; beggars sat on the steps outside the door, exhibiting their sores and pustules and the mutilations supposedly earned in Flanders, even Lepanto, and wrangling over the best places at the exit from the mass, ready to berate arrogantly, as their right, the caballeros and damas who gave themselves airs but would not allow a wretched copper coin to see the light of day.

The three of us positioned ourselves near the door, at a spot from which we could survey both the nave of the church and the choir, and the iron lattice that divided the church from the convent. At that moment, the nave was so jammed with people that had there been only one or two more, the Christ on the main altar would have had to be portrayed hanged, arms at his side, rather than crucified. I watched the captain, hat in hand and cape over his arm, study the plan of the building, just as, when we reached the church, his alert eyes had registered every detail of the garden walls and the façade of the convent. The mass had progressed to the liturgy of the word, and when the celebrant turned to the assembly I was at last able to see the face of the renowned chaplain Coroado, who was reeling off Latin with eloquence, finesse, and aplomb. He seemed to be well favored, elegant beneath the chasuble, thick black hair tonsured and trimmed at the nape of his neck. His eyes were dark and penetrating, and it was not difficult to imagine their effect upon the daughters of Eve, especially in the case of nuns whose order closed off all contact with the world and the opposite sex.

I was incapable of looking at the man without thinking of everything I knew about him, and about the convent in which he made a dressing gown of his cassock. I must apologize for mentioning the ill feeling and indignation caused by his ritualized performance, the fatuous unction with which he celebrated Christ’s sacrifice. I was astounded that no one among the assembly shouted out “sacrilege,” or “hypocrite,” and that I saw nothing around me but devotion, even admiration, in the eyes of many women. But that is the way of life, and that was but one of the first times, among no few to come, that I was taught a useful lesson about how appearances trump truth, and how villains hide their vices behind masks of piety, honor, and decency. And that to denounce evildoers without proof, attack them without weapons, trust blindly in reason or justice, is often the fastest road toward one’s own perdition, while the scoundrels who use influence or money as a shield remain untouched. Another lesson that I learned early on is that it is a grave error to align our fortunes with those of the powerful, for we are more certain to lose than to win. Better to wait, not rush or flounder about, until time or chance brings the adversary within range of our blade: something that in Spain—here, sooner or later, we all go up and come down the same stairway—is normal, even inevitable and expected. And if not, patience. After all, God has the last word; He shuffles all the cards.

“Second chapel on the left,” whispered don Francisco. “Behind the grille.”

Captain Alatriste, whose eyes were focused on the altar, stood riveted a moment longer, then turned to look in the direction the poet indicated. I followed his gaze toward the chapel that connected the church with the convent, where the black-and-white headdresses of nuns and novices could be glimpsed through the heavy iron lattice, to which, apparently, because of the severity of the cloister rules, spikes had been added to keep any man from approaching too closely. That was our Spain: severe rigor and ceremony, all intimidating spikes, divisive grilles, and grand façades. In the midst of the disasters in Europe, the Cortes of Castile were arguing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, while predatory priests, nuns without calling, officials, judges, nobles—every mother’s son—were quietly raking in fortunes. Indeed, the nation that was mistress of two worlds was becoming the courtyard of the master thief Monipodio, providing an opportunity for larceny and envy and a paradise for go-betweens and Pharisees, all patched together with honors, bought consciences, widespread hunger, and unrestrained wickedness to ease it along.

“What do you think, Captain?”

The poet had spoken very quietly, taking advantage of the moment the parishioners were reciting the profession of faith. In one hand he held his hat, and the other hand was on the pommel of his sword; he was staring straight ahead with a deceptively abstracted air, as if he had nothing but the liturgy on his mind.

“Difficult,” Alatriste replied.

The poet’s deep sigh blended into the
Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero,
which the communicants were praying in chorus. A little farther away, in the shelter of a column, attempting to pass as unobserved among the crowd as a thief in a circle of scribes, I saw the elder son of don Vicente de la Cruz, the one who had discovered me when the traitorous cat startled me in my hiding place. His face was partially muffled and he was staring toward the nuns’ chapel. I wondered whether Elvira de la Cruz was there, and if she could see her brother. The natural romanticism of a youth of my years shot off after the image of that young girl I had never met, but whom I imagined to be a beautiful, tormented prisoner awaiting liberation. The hours in her cell must have become interminable, waiting for a signal, a message, a note announcing that she should be ready to escape. Spurred by my imagination, which flowed so freely at moments that it made me feel like a hero in a book of chivalry—after all, fate
had
made me a part of this enterprise—I squinted hard, trying to pick out Elvira behind the iron latticework that shut her off from the world, and after a moment I saw white fingertips rest for an instant between the heavy bars. I stood there a long time, enchanted, openmouthed, hoping to see the hand appear again, until a well-disguised pinch on the nape of my neck snapped me out of my reverie. Then, against my will, I turned and looked straight ahead, as discreet as anyone could wish. And when the celebrant turned toward us to say
“Dominus vobiscum,”
I looked at his hypocritical face, and without blinking responded,
“Et cum spiritu tuo,”
with such devotion and piety that had my poor old mother seen and heard me, she would have rejoiced.

We left with the
Ite, missa est.
A splendid sun was shining, heightening the colors of the geranium and caraway plants at the windows of La Encarnación across the street. Don Francisco lagged behind, for he knew everyone in Madrid—he had as many friends as enemies—and was enjoying flirting with some of the ladies and conversing with their companions, peering between them from time to time to catch a glimpse of the captain and me as we strolled alongside the wall of Las Benitas’s garden. I noticed that the captain was paying special attention to a small door, locked from inside, in the brick wall that was ten feet tall at that point. He also took note of a carriage guard at the corner that would make it possible for someone with sufficient agility to leap over the top. I watched as his keen eyes studied the little door as if he were searching for breaches in an enemy wall. I knew he was interested because he was making that gesture so typical of him: stroking his mustache with two fingers, a sign that usually—reflectively or angrily—preceded putting a hand to his sword when someone was beginning to try his patience. It was at this juncture that the elder son of don Vicente de la Cruz, his hat pulled low on his forehead, caught up with us, though he gave no sign of recognizing us. I observed, however, by the way he was walking and guardedly looking around, that he too was inspecting Las Benitas’s walls.

At that moment a small incident occurred that I relate here because it is a good example of Diego Alatriste’s nature. We had paused a moment as the captain pretended to be adjusting his belt in order to examine the lock of the door, when we were overtaken by a foursome leaving mass: a pair of foppish young men accompanying two rather common, but beautiful, women. One of the men, the one wearing a velvet doublet with slashed sleeves, a multitude of ribbons and bows, and a silver-embroidered band around the crown of his hat, bumped into me and then, ill-humoredly, shoved me aside, calling me a little pissant. I was not as yet carrying a dagger, because of my youth, but a few years later that discourtesy would have cost him, however well dressed he might be, a stab in the groin with the dagger. Soon, in Flanders, I would carry one as if I’d never been without it.