His second adversary was by now rolling, wounded, at his feet, but a third had come along, and don Francisco was getting winded. The captain, who was less engaged, clamped his dagger between his teeth, and with his left hand pulled his pistol from his belt; when he was but a handspan from the enemy harassing the poet, he fired a shot that blew away half the man’s jaw. The flash of the shot temporarily stopped any who were thinking of joining the fray, so, taking advantage of the interruption, and not awaiting an invitation, don Francisco, very spry despite his lameness, broke away, running fleetly.
After waiting a few seconds to further discourage anyone who might follow, Alatriste did the same, choosing for his retreat an alleyway that he had scouted out earlier. This was the custom of veteran soldiers, who establish escape routes before a combat, for when a bad card is dealt, there is not always sufficient time or clarity of judgment to make such useful appraisals. The narrow street he had chosen ran beneath an arch and ended at a wall that he easily leapt over, landing on a chicken coop and waking the hens. Someone lighted a lantern and shouted something from a window; by then the captain was across the courtyard, tripping in the darkness but without hurting himself. After climbing over a fence, he was free and in a reasonably good state of health, except for a few scratches and a mouth drier than the sand dunes at Nieuwpoort. He found a dark corner where he could catch his breath, wondering whether don Franciso de Quevedo had gotten away safely. Once he could hear something besides his own gasping, he listened carefully: no shots or yells from the direction of the convent.
No one, pardiez, would give a maravedí for the skin of don Vicente de la Cruz and his sons. In the little likely case that one of them was left alive.
He heard running, like that of armed men, and there was a glare of lanterns at the corner. Then all was silent again. Rested, and in command of himself, he lingered a long while in the darkness. He was trembling; the sweat beneath his buffcoat was now chill, but he paid little attention. He kept turning over and over the question of who had set that trap for them.
The shots and the clanging blades had made me retrace my steps, as I asked myself what could be happening in La Encarnación plaza. I started running back toward it, but prudence quickly gained the upper hand. He who loses his head—goes one of the soldiers’ sayings I had learned from the captain—ends up really losing that head, often with the unwelcome assistance of a rope. So I stopped, with my heart jumping out of my breast, as I tried to decide what was the best thing to do. Would I be a help or a hindrance to my friends?
That was the situation when I heard the sound of running footsteps and the hair-raising cry of “By the authority of the Inquisition!” which in that day, as I have already recounted to Your Mercies, would raise gooseflesh on the most villainous of men. It spurred me to action, I can assure you, and with the greatest caution, I had in a trice taken refuge behind the low stone parapet that served as a kind of railing down the length of the hill. I had scarcely got my breath back from my scramble over the wall when I heard footsteps nearby, more shots and cries, and the clash of steel. I had put aside my concerns about the fate of the captain and don Francisco and begun to worry about my own, when a body came tumbling over the low wall beside me.
I was ready to sprint from that place like a hare, but the new arrival uttered a mournful moan that made me turn and look at him. There was enough moonlight that I was able to recognize the younger of the two de la Cruz brothers, the one called don Luis, who had fled from the convent badly wounded. As I went toward him, he staggered to his feet and looked at me with frightened eyes that glowed feverishly in the scant light. I ran my fingers over his face, as blind men do to recognize people, and he fell toward me, prey to something that for an instant I took to be a faint, but, when I put out my hands to steady him, I learned was loss of blood from his wounds. Don Luis was perforated with stabs and shot from a harquebus, and when he collapsed into my arms I smelled sweat mixed with the sickeningly sweet scent of blood.
“Help me, boy,” he murmured.
He had spoken so quietly that I could barely hear his words, and the breath it cost him to speak seemed to have weakened him further. I tried to get him to stand, pulling him by one arm, but he was very heavy and his wounds made him nearly lifeless. All I got from him was a prolonged moan of pain. He had lost his sword, and the only weapon he had left was the dagger at his waist—I had touched the grip when I tried to lift him.
“Help me,” he repeated.
In his present state, he seemed much younger, closer to my own age; and everything that had impressed me earlier, his elegance and charm, had vanished completely. He was older than I, and a handsome man, but he had as many holes as a sieve. I was unhurt, and his only hope, which made me feel strangely responsible. So, restraining my natural inclination to leave him there and look for safe haven as fast as my legs could carry me, I stayed on.
I pressed as close to him as I could, pulled his arms around my neck, and tried to lift him onto my back, but he was limp and slippery from his own blood. I swiped my hand over my face, despairing, and as I did, bathed myself with the viscous liquid dripping on me. Don Luis had fallen back again against the stone wall, and was now suffering very little. I tried to feel for one of the large holes through which his soul was escaping, thinking I would plug it with a linen handkerchief I had pulled from my pouch, but by the time I found a hole and put my fingers in it—like Doubting Saint Thomas—I knew that it was futile, and that the young man was not going to see the dawn.
I felt unnaturally lucid. It is time to get going, Íñigo, I told myself. The shots and the din had faded from the plaza, and the silence, if possible, was even more menacing. Again I thought of the captain and don Francisco. By now they could be dead, imprisoned, or fleeing; none of the three possibilities was encouraging, however much my confidence in the poet’s sword and my master’s serenity inclined me to believe they were safely away or taking refuge in one of the few churches open at this early morning hour.
I got up slowly. Luis de la Cruz was on the ground, curled into a ball and no longer moaning. He was dying, and all I heard was his breathing, growing steadily weaker and more irregular, punctuated from time to time by a sinister gargle. He was not strong enough to ask me to help him or to call me “boy.” He was drowning in his own blood, which was spreading slowly into a large dark pool gleaming in the light of the moon.
A single shot from a pistol or harquebus rang out in the distance, as if it had been fired at someone being pursued, and I clung to that sound, hoping it might have been aimed—unsuccessfully—at the fleet shadow of Captain Alatriste running to safety in the darkness. As for my own young hide, it was time to find sanctuary for it. So once more I bent over the dying man. I pulled out the dagger that would be of no help to him in his journey, and stood up, ready to quit that unhappy place.
But, could that be music? A kind of ti-ri-tu, ta-ta from someone whistling behind me. The sound turned me to ice, and my fingers, sticky with the blood of Luis de la Cruz, tightened on his dagger grip. I turned very slowly, holding the dagger high, and as I did, moonlight glanced from the blade. At the far end of the low stone wall was a familiar shape: a dark silhouette cloaked in a cape and a black wide-brimmed hat. Recognizing who it was, I knew that the trap was lethal, and that I had sprung it.
“So, boy, we meet again,” said the shadow.
Gualterio Malatesta’s gruff, grating voice resounding in the silence of the night was a sentence of death. Your Mercies will ask why the Devil I stood there, flat-footed, instead of flying out of there like a soul in the arms of the Devil—or one fleeing from him. The reasons are two. For one, the Italian’s appearance had left me as frozen as a post sunk in the ground; the second, my enemy was standing directly in the path I had to take to escape the pocket where poor Luis de la Cruz lay. Whatever the reason, there I was, holding the dagger before me as Malatesta calmly looked me over, as if he were already at the Gates of Hell.