The crooked lines exchanged an uneasy glance as the priest continued. "Tonight," he said, "I am entrusting to you a task of sacred inspiration," and he added, "You are to fulfill it regardless of the cost, because in so doing you serve divine justice. If you refuse, if you cast aside the burden, the wrath of God will fall upon you through the long and terrible arm of the Holy Office. We are like muleteers. Ubiquitous and persistent."
With that the Dominican was silent, and no one dared speak a word. Even the Italian had forgotten his tra-la-las, and that said a lot.
In the Spain of that day, to quarrel with the powerful Inquisition meant to confront a series of horrors that often included prison, torture, the stake, and death. Even the toughest men trembled at the mention of the Holy Office, and for his part, Diego Alatriste, like all Madrid, knew very well the infamous reputation of Fray Emilio Bocanegra, president of the Council of Six Judges, whose influence reached as far as the Grand Inquisitor, and even the private corridors of the Royal Palace. Only a week before, because of a so-called crimen pessimum, Padre Bocanegra had convinced the tribunal to burn four young servants of the Conde de Monteprieto in the Plaza Mayor when, after being subjected to the Inquisitorial rack, they denounced each other as sodomites. As for the aristocratic count— himself a bachelor and a melancholy man—his title as a grandee of Spain had saved him from an identical fate by only a hair's breadth. The king contented himself with signing a decree to seize his possessions and send him into exile in Italy. The merciless Bocanegra had personally conducted the entire proceedings, and that triumph was the last step in securing his fearsome power at court. Even the Conde de Olivares, a favorite of the king, tried to please the ferocious Dominican.
This was no time to so much as blink. Captain Alatriste sighed deep inside, realizing that the two Englishmen, whoever they might be and despite the good intentions of the heavier masked man, had been sentenced without reprieve. They were dealing with the Church, and arguing any further would be, in addition to fruitless, dangerous.
"What are we to do?" he said finally, resigned to the inevitable.
"Kill them outright," Fray Emilio replied instantly, the fire of fanaticism blazing in his eyes.
"Without knowing who they are?"
"We have already told you who they are," the masked man with the round head reminded him. "Misters Thomas and John Smith. English travelers."
"And ungodly Anglicans," added the priest, his voice crackling with anger. "But you have no need to know who they are. It is enough that they come from a land of heretics—a treacherous people, anathema to Spain and the Catholic religion. By executing God's will, you will render a valuable service to the All Powerful and to the crown."
Having said this, the priest took out another purse containing twenty gold coins and disdainfully tossed it on the table.
"You see now," he added, "that divine justice, unlike the earthly kind, pays in advance, although over time it collects its return." He stared at the captain and the Italian as if engraving their faces in his memory. "No one escapes His eyes, and God knows very well where to come to collect His debts."
Diego Alatriste made as if to nod in agreement. He was a man with brass, but actually the gesture was an attempt to hide a shudder. The lamplight made the priest look diabolical, and the menace in his voice would have been enough to alter the composure of the bravest of men. Standing beside the captain, the Italian was pale, without his ti-ri-tu, ta-ta or his smile. Not even the round-headed man dared open his mouth.
III. A LITTLE LADY
Perhaps because a man's true homeland is his childhood, despite all the time that has gone by, I always remember the Tavern of the Turk with nostalgia. The place, Captain Alatriste, and those hazardous years of my boyhood are all gone now, but in the days of our Philip the Fourth, the tavern was one of four hundred in which the seventy thousand residents of Madrid could quench their thirst. That comes to about one tavern for every one hundred and seventy-five citizens. And that is not counting brothels, gaming houses, and other public establishments of, shall we say, relaxed or dubious moral ambience, which in a paradoxical, unique, and never-again-to-be-the-same Spain were visited as frequently as the churches—and often by the same people.
La Lebrijana's enterprise was in fact a cellar of the sort where one came to eat, drink, and burn the night away, located on the corner of Calles Toledo and Arcabuz, about five hundred steps from the Plaza Mayor. The two rooms where Diego Alatriste and I lived were on the upper floor, and in a way the den below served as our sitting room. The captain liked to go down there to kill time when he had nothing better to do—which was often. Despite the smell of grease and smoke from the kitchen, the dirty floor and tables, and the mice running around, chased by the cat or looking for bread crumbs, it was a comfortable-enough place. It was also entertaining, because there were frequently travelers brought by post horse, and magistrates, tipstaves, flower vendors, and shopkeepers from the nearby Providencia and La Cebada plazas, as well as former soldiers drawn by the proximity of the principal streets of the city and the mentidero at San Felipe el Real, a center where idlers gathered to gossip. Not to disdain the tavern's attractions—a little faded but still splendid—and the longtime fame of the tavernkeeper and the Valdemoro wines—a muscatel as well as an aromatic San Martin de Valdeiglesias—but the place had another drawing card. It was blessed with a back gate that opened onto a courtyard and the next street, a very handy feature when one was slipping away from sheriffs, catchpoles, creditors, poets, friends in need of money, and other miscreants and inopportune guests.
As for Diego Alatriste, the table that Caridad la Lebrijana reserved for him near the door was commodious and sunny, and sometimes the wine brought with it a meat pie or some cracklings. The captain had carried over from his youth—something he said very little or nothing about—a certain taste for reading. It was not unusual to see him sitting at his table, alone, his sword and hat hung on a peg in the wall, reading the printed version of Lope's latest play—he was the captain's favorite author—recently performed in El Principe or La Cruz. Or it might be one of the gazettes or broadsides featuring the anonymous satiric verses that circulated at court in that time that was at once magnificent, decadent, mournful, and inspired—a time that cast a shadow as black as a curate's cloak over the favorite, the monarchy, and the morning star. In many verses, in fact, Alatriste recognized the corrosive wit and proverbial bad temper of his friend the unredeemed grumbler and popular poet Don Francisco de Quevedo:
Here lies Senor Perez, the swine
Whose life was Satan's appetizer
While his devil's broth was stewing.
No pussy ever meowed to him.
How he rued Herod's misconstruing
The use of power; so much wiser
Not to have slaughtered innocent lambs:
Forsooth! Such succulent cherubim
Should be spared and saved for screwing.
And other pretty bits of the sort. I imagine that my poor widowed mother, back there in her tiny Basque town, would have been alarmed had she had a hint of what strange company my serving as the captain's page had led me into. But as for the young Inigo Balboa, at thirteen he found that world to be a fascinating spectacle, and a singular school of life.
I mentioned a couple of chapters ago that Don Francisco, along with Licenciado Calzas, Juan Vicuna, Domine Perez, the pharmacist Fadrique, and others of the captain's friends, often came to the tavern, and engaged in long discussions about politics, theater, poetry, and routinely, a punctilious appraisal of the many wars in which our poor Spain had been or was then involved. She may still have been powerful and feared by other nations, but she was touched with death in her soul. The battlefields of those wars were skillfully re-created on the tavern table by Juan Vicuna, using bits of bread, cutlery, and jugs of wine. Originally from Extremadura, and badly wounded at Nieuwpoort, he had once been a sergeant in the horse guard, and deemed himself a master strategist.