“Tell me something about yourself,” she said suddenly.
I placed my sword between my legs and sat for a while, nonplussed, not knowing what to say. Finally, I spoke about the first time I had seen her, in Calle de Toledo, when she was still little more than a child. I spoke about the Fuente del Acero, the dungeons of the Inquisition, the shame of the auto-da-fé, about her letter to me in Flanders, about how I had thought of her when the Dutch charged us at the Ruyter Mill and at the Terheyden barracks, while I was running after Captain Alatriste, carrying the flag, convinced that I was going to die.
“What is war like?”
She seemed to be paying close attention to my mouth, to me or to my words. I suddenly felt very grown-up. Almost old.
“Dirty,” I said simply. “Dirty and gray.”
She shook her head slowly, as if pondering this thought. Then she asked me to go on talking, and the dirt and the grayness were relegated to just one part of my memory. I rested my chin on the hilt of my sword and talked more about us—her and me. About our meeting in the Alcázar in Seville and the ambush she had led me into next to the pillars of Hercules. About our first kiss as I stood on the running board of her carriage, moments before I had to fight for my life with Gualterio Malatesta. That, more or less, is what I said. No words of love, no feelings. I merely described our meetings, the part of my life that had to do with her, and I did so with as much equanimity as possible, detail by detail, just as I remembered it and always would.
“Don’t you believe that I love you?” she said.
We gazed at each other for what seemed like centuries, and my head started to swim as if I had drunk a potion. I opened my mouth to say something—although quite what I didn’t know—or to kiss her perhaps. Not the kind of kiss she had given me in the Plaza de Santo Domingo, but a long, hard kiss, filled with a simultaneous desire to bite and caress, and with all the vigor of youth about to burst in my veins. And she smiled at me, her lips only inches from my mouth, with the serene certainty of someone who knows and waits and is capable of transforming mere chance into a man’s inevitable fate, as if long before I was born, everything had been written down in an ancient book which she kept in her possession.
“Yes, I believe . . .” I started to say.
Then her expression changed. Her eyes shifted rapidly back to the tavern door, and I followed her gaze. Two men had come out into the street, hats pulled down low over their eyes; there was a furtive air about them as they put on their cloaks. One of them was wearing a yellow doublet.
We followed them cautiously through the dark city streets. We did our best not to make a noise as we walked, trying not to lose sight of their black shapes ahead of us. Fortunately, they suspected nothing and followed a clear route: from Calle de Tudescos to Calle de la Verónica, and from there to Postigo de San Martín, which they followed as far as San Luis de los Franceses. There they paused to doff their hats to a priest who was just coming out of the church, accompanied by an altar boy and a page bearing a lantern, obviously setting out to give someone the last rites. In the brief light cast by that lantern, I had a chance to study the two men we were following: apart from his eyes, the face of the man in the yellow doublet was entirely hidden by his black hat and cloak; he was wearing shoes and hose, and when he removed his hat, I noticed that he had fair hair. The other man was wearing a featherless hat, boots, and a gray cloak, which his sword lifted up behind; and as he was leaving the Tavern of the Dog, I caught a glimpse of his belt and noticed that, as well as the sword buckled on over his thick jerkin, he had a fine pair of pistols, too.
“They look like dangerous men,” I whispered to Angélica.
“And does that worry you?”
I was too offended to reply. The men continued walking, and we followed behind. A little farther on, in San Luis, next to the stone cross that still marks the site of one of the city’s old gates, we passed the stalls where they sold bread or food and drinks during the day; they were all closed and there was not a soul in sight. In Calle del Caballero de Gracia, the men stopped in a doorway to avoid a light advancing toward them; as the light passed us, we saw that it was a midwife hurrying to assist at a birth, her path lit by a nervous, harried husband. Then the two men continued on, always keeping to the part of the street where the moonlight did not reach. We pursued them for a fair distance through dark streets, past barred windows with shutters or lowered blinds, past startled cats, past the oily flames of candles in niches containing images of the Virgin or of saints, and, in the distance, we caught the occasional warning cry of someone emptying a chamber pot into the street. From an alleyway came the sound of clashing steel, of furious fighting, and the two men stopped to listen; the incident clearly held no interest for them, however, because they did not linger. When Angélica and I reached the same spot, a figure, his cloak masking his face, ran past us, sword in hand. I peered cautiously down the alley and saw nothing but more barred windows and flowerpots; then I heard someone at the far end moan. I sheathed my sword—I had whisked it out at the sight of the fugitive—and made as if to go to the aid of the wounded man, but Angélica gripped my arm.
“It’s not our business.”
“But someone might be dying,” I protested.
“We’ll all die one day.”
And she strode off after the two men, obliging me to follow her through the dark city. For that was how it was in Madrid at night: dark, uncertain, and threatening.
We followed the men as far as a house in the narrow upper part of Calle de los Peligros, halfway between Calle del Caballero de Gracia and the Convento de las Vallecas. Angélica and I stood in the street, unsure what to do, until she suggested that we take shelter beneath an arcade. We sat down on a bench hidden behind a stone pillar. It was getting colder and so I offered her my cloak, which she had already refused twice. This time she accepted, on condition that it serve to cover us both. And so I placed it over my shoulders and hers, which meant, of course, that we had to sit very close. You can imagine my state of mind. Head spinning, I sat resting my hands on the guard of my sword, filled by an inner excitement that prevented me from stringing two thoughts together. She, with lovely ease, kept watch on the house opposite. She seemed tenser now, but still showed a serenity and self-control admirable in a girl of her age and social class. We talked quietly, our shoulders touching. She still would not tell me what we were doing there.
“Later,” she would say each time I asked.
The roof of the arcade hid the moon, and her face was in shadow, a dark profile at my side. I was aware of the warmth of her body. I felt like someone who has willingly placed his neck in the hangman’s noose, but I didn’t care a jot. Angélica was beside me, and I would not have changed places with the safest, happiest man on earth.
“It isn’t really important,” I insisted. “I’d just like to know more.”
“About what?”
“About this madness you’re involved in.”
A mischievous silence ensued. Then she said gleefully:
“And in which you’re now involved too.”
“That’s precisely what worries me: not knowing what it is I’m involved in.”
“You’ll find out.”
“I’m sure I will, but the last time that happened, I found myself surrounded by half a dozen killers, and the time before that, I ended up in one of the Inquisition’s dungeons.”