Purity of Blood (17 page)

The reading of the sentences began. One by one, penitents were led before the tribunal and there, after a detailed recitation of their crimes and sins, their fate was announced. Those who were to be lashed, or who were being sent to the galleys, moved on, roped together; then those destined for the stake followed, hands bound. Those latter victims were said to be “relapsed”; for since the Inquisition was ecclesiastical, it could not shed one drop of blood, and in order to do lip service to the rules, the prisoners were said to have “fallen away” and were handed over to secular justice. Burning them at the stake prevented the profuse bloodletting of other measures. I leave Your Mercies to judge the unholy logic of that process.

These readings, the abjurations
de levi
and
de vehementi—
lighter and stronger recantations—were met with screams of anguish from those sentenced to unendurable punishment, resignation in others, and the public’s approval when the maximum penalty was applied. The priest who denied the presence of Christ in the host was condemned to the stake amid roaring applause and nods of satisfaction. After brutally scourging his hands, tongue, and tonsure as a sign that he was stripped of his sacred orders, his tormentors led him to the stake, which had been set up on the esplanade outside the Puerta de Alcalá. The old woman accused of witchcraft—of too easily finding treasures hidden by fleeing Jews and Moors—was sentenced to a hundred lashes, with the additional punishment of life imprisonment—and little that mattered, for such an elderly lady! A bigamist got off with two hundred lashes and exile for ten years, the first six to be spent rowing in the galleys. Two blasphemers received exile and three years in Oran. A cobbler and his wife, reconciled Jews, were sentenced to life imprisonment and a
de vehementi
abjuration. The twelve-year-old girl, a Judaizer, received a sentence of wearing an identifiable brown habit and serving two years of confinement, at the end of which she would be placed in a home with a Christian family to be instructed in the Faith. Her sixteen-year-old sister, a Judaizer, was condemned to life imprisonment without appeal. Their own father, a Portuguese tanner, had denounced them, under torture; he himself was sentenced to a
de vehementi
abjuration before being burned at the stake. He was the man who had been brought in on muleback because he could not walk. The mother, her whereabouts unknown, would be burned in effigy.

Accompanying the priest and the tanner on their way to the stake were a merchant and his wife, also Portuguese Jews, an apprentice silversmith—clearly a grievous sin—and Elvira de la Cruz. Everyone but the priest recanted in due form, and showed repentance. They would be mercifully garroted before being burned. The grotesque effigy of don Vicente de la Cruz, and those of his two sons, the dead one and the one who could not be found, were set atop long poles. His daughter wore the white sanbenito and conical hat, and in that garb was led before the judges to be read her sentence. With bone-chilling indifference, she recanted, as asked, all the crimes she had committed and would ever commit: being a Judaizer, a criminal conspirator, and violating a sacred place, among other charges. She looked totally forsaken up on that platform, head low, her Inquisitorial robes hanging like a sack over her tortured body. After recanting, she heard her sentence confirmed with resigned apathy. I was moved to pity despite the accusations she had made against me, or had allowed to be made. Poor girl, she was the victim and instrument of brutes without scruples or conscience, however much they paraded their God and their holy faith.

After Elvira was taken away, I saw that it was not long before my turn. The plaza began to whirl before me; I was numb with terror and shame. Desperate, I looked for the face of Captain Alatriste or some friend to find comfort, but I found nothing, not one trace of pity or sympathy. Nothing but a wall of hostile faces, jeering, expectant, sinister. The face a mob adopts when treated to free barbaric spectacles.

But Alatriste saw me. He was again beside one of the columns of the arches, and from there could see the bench where I sat with other penitents, each of us flanked by a pair of constables as mute as stones. Preceding me in the fateful ritual was a barber accused of blasphemy and of making a pact with the Devil—a short, wretched-looking man who sobbed with his face in his hands because no one was going to save him from his hundred lashes and years of flogging fish in the galleys of our lord and king.

The captain moved on a little, placing himself where I could see him if I looked in that direction, but I was not capable of seeing anything, sunk as I was in the torment of my own nightmare. Beside Alatriste, a pillicock garbed in his best was ridiculing those of us on the platform, pointing us out, between gibes, to his companions, and at a certain moment he made some jeering comment about me. Up to that point, the captain’s habitual restraint had tempered his impotent rage, but now that anger made him turn, without a moment’s reflection and, as if accidentally, swing an elbow into the churl’s gut. The man whirled about with an angry frown, but his protest died in his throat when he looked into the gray-green eyes of Diego Alatriste, staring at him with such menacing coldness that he closed up like a tulip at eventide.

Again Alatriste moved on, and as he did, he could better see Luis de Alquézar in his loge. The royal secretary stood out from other officials because of the embroidered cross of Calatrava on his chest. He was in black, and his round head with its feathery hair was rigid atop the starched collar: he might have been a figure in a painting. His clever eyes, however, were darting from side to side, taking in every detail of the events. At times that evil gaze focused on the fanatic countenance of Fray Emilio Bocanegra, and in their sinister immobility his eyes seemed to have communicated perfectly. At that moment and in that place they were the embodiment of true power in that court of venal functionaries and fanatic priests. They acted under the diffident regard of the fourth Hapsburg, who was watching his subjects condemned to the stake without lifting an eyebrow, reacting only to turn from time to time to the queen to explain, behind the cover of a glove or a blue-veined hand, some detail of the spectacle. Elegant, chivalrous, affable, and weak, he was the august plaything of his advisors. Hieratical, incapable of seeing earth, he gazed always toward heaven. Unsuited for bearing upon his royal shoulders the grand heritage of his ancestors, he was dragging us along the road to the abyss.

My fate was beyond remedy, and had the plaza not been swarming with catchpoles, constables,
familiares,
and royal guards, perhaps Diego Alatriste would have done something barbarous, desperate, and heroic. At least I like to believe that he would, given the opportunity. But all was futile; time was running against him and against me. Even should don Francisco de Quevedo arrive, once my custodians pulled me to my feet and led me toward the dais where the sentences were being read, neither our lord and king nor the Pope of Rome could alter my fate. And no one knew what he might bring, in any case, that would alter anything, even should he arrive in the dwindling few seconds.

The captain was agonizing over that very knowledge when he became aware that Luis de Alquézar was looking directly at him. Actually it was impossible to know that, for Alatriste was nearly invisible beneath his hat in the midst of that mob of people. Yet he was sure that Alquézar’s eyes had been focused on him; then he saw the royal secretary catch Fray Emilio Bocanegra’s eye, and he, as if he had just received a message, turned to scour the crowd. Alquézar slowly lifted one hand to his chest, and he seemed to be searching for someone among the throng to Alatriste’s left, for his eyes were fixed on a point there. The hand slowly rose and fell, twice, and the secretary again looked toward the captain. Alatriste turned and sighted two or three hats moving toward the place where he was standing beneath the arches.

The captain’s instinct took charge before his mind could analyze the situation. Swords were useless in such a tightly packed crowd, so he readied the dagger he wore at his left side, freeing it from the tail of his short cape. Then he faded back among the spectators. Imminent danger had always given him a clear mind and a practical economy of actions and words. He moved along the row of columns, and saw the hats stop, indecisive, at the spot where he had been. He quickly glanced toward Luis de Alquézar’s loge, where the secretary was still scrutinizing the throng below; the rigid impassivity demanded by protocol could not hide his irritation.

Alatriste moved on toward the de la Carne arches and the other side of the plaza, and peered up at the platform from that angle. He could not see me, but he did have a good view of Alquézar’s profile. He was grateful that he had not brought his pistol—they were forbidden, and among so many people it was dangerous to move about with one on him—for he might not have been able to suppress the impulse to leap onto the platform and roast the secretary’s chestnuts with one shot.
But you
will
die,
he swore mentally, eyes drilling into the royal secretary’s despicable face.
And until the day you do, you will remember my visit. You will never sleep easily again.

They had brought the barber accused of blasphemy to the dais, and were beginning the long relation of his crime and sentence. Alatriste thought he remembered that I came after the barber, and he was trying to edge a little closer so he could see me, when he again caught sight of the hats, now dangerously close. These were obviously tenacious men. One had dropped back, as if to search in a different part of the crowd; but two of them—a black felt and another brown with a long plume—were progressing in his direction, breasting their way through the sea of humanity.

There was no choice but to take cover, so the captain had to give up trying to see me and retreat beneath the arches. He would not have the ghost of a chance among that throng; all anyone had to do was call upon the minions of the Holy Office and every man down to the last idler would join in the chase. The opportunity to slip away was only a few steps farther on: a narrow alley with two sharp turns that led to the Plaza de la Provincia. On days like these, people used the alley to relieve themselves, despite the crosses and saints the residents placed at each corner to discourage that practice. The captain walked in that direction, and just before plunging into the narrow passageway, in which no more than one person could move at a time, he glanced over his shoulder and saw two figures emerging from the crowd, right on his heels.

He did not even venture a longer look. He quickly unfastened his short cape, wrapped it around his left arm to serve as a buckler, and with his right hand unsheathed the
vizcaína
—to the shock of a poor man emptying his bladder at the first turn, who when he saw the weapon, made fumble-fingered attempts to fasten his breeches as quickly as possible. Ignoring him, Alatriste set one shoulder against the wall, which, like the ground, stunk of urine and filth.
A fine place to be knifed,
he thought as he took a tighter grip on the
vizcaína.
A fine place,
pardiez,
to go to hell in good company.

The first of his pursuers turned into the little alley, and, corralled in that very tight space, Alatriste glimpsed eyes terrified by the gleam of his naked dagger. He even made out a large mustache, shaped like a sword guard, and the thick sidewhiskers of a blustering braggart. Quick as lightning, he bent down and slashed the hamstring of the new arrival. Then in the same upward movement, he slashed his throat. The man fell without time to say “Hail Mary, Mother of…,” sprawling in the alley with his life gushing in red spurts from his gullet.

The man behind him was Gualterio Malatesta, and it was a pity he had not been the first. Alatriste needed only a glance at his lean black silhouette to know who he was. In the haste of his pursuit, and then the surprise of the unexpected encounter, the Italian had not yet drawn a weapon, so he jumped back as his companion slumped dying before him, and as the captain lashed out with a slaughterer’s swing that missed by a thumb’s width. The constriction of the alley left no room for swords, so Malatesta took what cover he could behind his moribund companion. He pulled out his
vizcaína,
and, like the captain, protecting himself with a cape around his arm, engaged Alatriste at close range, crowding him and skillfully dodging and returning thrusts. Daggers ripped cloth, rang on stone walls, brutally targeted the enemy, and neither of the two uttered a word, saving their breath for more deadly purposes. There was still surprise in the Italian’s eyes—no
ti-ri-tu, ta-ta
from him this time, the bastard—when the captain’s dagger sank into the flesh beneath the improvised shield of Malatesta’s cape. His companion, an obstacle between them, was with the Devil now, or well on his way.

The Italian reeled from the wound, and as Alatriste leaned toward him over the fallen man, Malatesta’s dagger ripped into his doublet, slicing off buttons and ties as he withdrew it. Arms wrapped in cape and capelet parried thrusts. The men’s faces were so close that the captain felt his enemy’s breath in his eyes before Malatesta spit into them. The captain blinked, blinded, and that allowed his opponent to land a blow with such force that, had the leather of the buffcoat not slowed it, the dagger would have gone in up to the hilt. As it was, the
vizcaína
sliced through clothing and flesh, and Alatriste felt a chill and a sharp pain when the blade touched his hip bone. Fearing he would faint, he struck at his enemy’s face with the grip of his dagger, and blood gushed from the Italian’s eyebrows, bathing the scars and craters of his skin and trickling from the tips of his thinly trimmed mustache.

Now the gleam of Malatesta’s hard, serpent eyes also reflected fear. Alatriste drew back his arm and stabbed again and again, hitting cape, doublet, air, wall, and finally—twice—human flesh. Malatesta grunted with pain and rage. Blood was streaming into his eyes as he struck out blindly, dangerous for being so unpredictable. Not counting the blow to his forehead, he had at least three wounds.