6. THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING
Angélica de Alquézar had again asked me to meet her at the Puerta de la Priora. As she put it in her brief note: I require an escort. I would be lying if I said that I had no reservations about accepting; on the other, hand, I never for a moment considered not going. Angélica had entered my blood like a quartan fever. I had tasted her lips, touched her skin, and seen too many promises in her eyes; my judgment grew blurred whenever she was involved. Nevertheless, however in love I may have been, I was not totally bereft of all common sense, and so this time, I took proper precautions, and when the door opened and that same agile shadow joined me in the darkness, I was reasonably well prepared for what might lie ahead. I had on a thick buffcoat made by a leatherworker in Calle de Toledo out of an old one belonging to the captain, and had my sword at my left side and my dagger tucked into my belt at the back. Covering and disguising all these things, I was wearing a gray serge cloak and a black hat with no feather or band. I had also washed with soap and water, and was sporting the soft down on my upper lip which I kept shaving in the hope that this would encourage it, one day, to reach the impressive dimensions of Captain Alatriste’s mustache; this it never did, by the way, for I never had much of a mustache or a beard. Before leaving, I scrutinized myself in La Lebrijana’s mirror, and was quite pleased with what I saw, and on my way to the rendezvous, whenever I passed beneath a torch or a lantern, I would admire my own shadow. I recall this now and smile, and I’m sure that you, dear readers, will understand.
“Where are you taking me this time?” I asked.
“I want to show you something,” replied Angélica. “It will be useful for your education.”
I did not find these words in the least reassuring. I had seen something of life by then and knew that anything “useful for one’s education” was only ever acquired with damage to one’s own ribs or with the kind of bloodletting not administered by a barber. So, once again, I prepared myself for the worst, or, rather, resigned myself—sweetly and fearfully. As I have said before, I was very young at the time and in love with the devil.
“You seem to like dressing as a man,” I said.
This continued both to fascinate and shock me. As I mentioned earlier, a woman adopting male attire in order to find manly glory or to seek a solution to troubles of the heart had been a commonplace in the theater since the early Italian plays and, indeed, since Ariosto, but the truth is that, plays and legends apart, such a figure never appeared in real life, or not at least in my experience. Angélica laughed softly, as if to herself, more Marfisa than Bradamante, for I would soon learn the extent to which she was moved less by love than by war.
“Surely,” she said mischievously, “you wouldn’t want me running around Madrid in skirt and farthingale.”
She completed this thought by placing her lips so close to my ear that they touched it, making the skin all over my body prickle; then she whispered these bold lines by Lope:
“How could he ever love me, he who saw me,
Bloodstained, beat down a wall of Turks?”
And, wretch that I was, the only thing that prevented me from kissing her, whether stained in blood or not, was the fact that she suddenly turned away and set off at a brisk pace. The journey, this time, was shorter. Following the walls of the Convento de María de Aragón, we walked through dark and near-deserted streets to the orchards and vegetable gardens of Leganitos, where I felt the cold and damp penetrate my serge cloak. In her mannish black clothes and with her dagger at her waist, she was only lightly dressed yet she did not appear to feel the cold. She strode resolutely into the night, determined and confident. When I paused to get my bearings, she carried on, without waiting, and I had no option but to go after her, casting cautious glances to right and left. She wore a page’s cap tucked into her belt so that she could cover her hair should this prove necessary, but meanwhile, she wore it loose, and the pale smudge of her fair hair guided me through the darkness toward the abyss.
There wasn’t a light to be seen anywhere. Alone in the dark, Diego Alatriste stopped and, with professional prudence, looked around him. Not a soul in sight. Again he touched the folded piece of paper he was carrying in his purse.
You deserve an explanation and a proper good-bye.
Meet me at eleven o’clock in Camino de las
Minillas. The first house.
María de Castro
He had hesitated right up until the last moment. Finally, when there was only just enough time, he had downed a quart of brandy to keep out the cold. Then, having equipped himself properly as regards weapons and clothing—including, this time, his buffcoat—he set off toward Plaza Mayor and from there to Santo Domingo before following Calle de Leganitos to the outskirts of the city. This was where he was now, standing by the bridge near the walls surrounding the orchards, watching the road that lay steeped in shadow. In common with all the other houses bordering the river, no lights were lit in the first house. These houses, each with its own orchard and fields, were often used as cool summer retreats. The one that interested Alatriste had been built against the wall of a ruined convent, whose cloister served as a small garden, its roofless pillars holding up the starry vault of the sky.
A dog barked in the distance and another answered. Then the barking stopped and silence was restored. Alatriste stroked his mustache as he again looked about him before proceeding. When he reached the house, he pushed back his cloak and folded it over his left shoulder so as to leave his sword free. He knew what might happen. He had thought about it all evening as he sat on his bed, staring at his weapons where they hung from a nail on the wall. Then he made his decision and set off. Oddly, this decision had nothing to do with desire. Or rather, if he was honest with himself, he did still desire María de Castro, but this wasn’t why he was standing now in the dark, listening intently, his hand hovering over the hilt of his sword, as he sniffed out possible perils like a boar scenting the presence of the huntsman and his pack of hounds. There was another reason, too. “The royal domain,” Guadalmedina and Martín Saldaña had said, but he had a perfect right to be there if he chose. He had spent his life defending the royal domain, as his scarred body bore witness. Like all good men, he had done his duty a hundred times, but king and pawn were equal when naked and in a woman’s bed.
The door stood ajar. He slowly pushed it open; beyond lay a dark hallway. “You might die here,” he said to himself. “Tonight.” He took out his dagger, smiled a crooked, dangerous, wolfish smile, then advanced into the darkness, the point of his blade foremost. With his free hand he groped his way along the bare walls of a corridor. An oil lamp was burning at the far end, lighting up the rectangle of a door that led to the cloister. A bad place for a fight, he thought—narrow and with no escape route. Nevertheless, placing one’s head in the lion’s mouth had its fascination, its own dark, distorted pleasure. In that unhappy Spain, which he had loved and which he now despised with a lucidity acquired through time and experience, one could buy honors and beauty as easily as one might buy plenary indulgences, but even in Spain, there were still some things that could not be bought. And he knew what those things were. There came a point when the gift of a gold chain, presented to him, in passing, in a palace in Seville, was not enough to bind Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, old soldier and paid swordsman. “After all,” he concluded, “if worst comes to worst, the only thing anyone can take from me is my life.”