The captain ran a hand over his unshaven face. He seemed thinner, more haggard. He was wearing darned stockings, a collarless shirt beneath his doublet, and breeches made from cheap cloth. He did not look well, but his soldier’s boots were standing in one corner, newly polished, and his new sword-belt on the table had just been freshly treated with horse grease. Cagafuego had bought him a hat and cloak from an old-clothes shop, as well as a rusty dagger that now lay sharpened and gleaming next to the pillow on the unmade bed.
“Did they give you much trouble?” the captain asked.
“No, not much,” I said with a shrug. “Besides, no one can prove I was involved.”
“And what about La Lebrijana?”
“The same.”
“How is she?”
I gazed down at the puddle of water on the floor, beneath the soles of my boots.
“You know what she’s like: lots of tears and threats. She swears blind that she’ll be there in the front row when they hang you. But she’ll get over it.” I smiled. “She’s softer than molasses, really.”
Cagafuego nodded gravely, as if he knew exactly what I meant. He looked as if he were about to offer his views on women and their jealousies and affections, but restrained himself. He had too much respect for my master to butt into the conversation.
“And is there any news of Malatesta?” asked the captain.
The name made me fidget in my seat.
“No, not a word.”
The captain was thoughtfully stroking his mustache. Now and then he studied my face closely, as if hoping to read in it anything I might be keeping from him.
“I might know where to find him,” he said.
These words suggested to me some mad plan.
“You mustn’t run any unnecessary risks.”
“We’ll see.”
“As the blind man said,” I commented bluntly.
He looked at me again, and I rather regretted my impertinence. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Bartolo Cagafuego’s reproving glance, but it was true that this was no time for the captain to be prowling the streets or lurking in the shadows. Before he did anything that might compromise him further, he should wait and see what progress don Francisco de Quevedo could make. And I, for my part, urgently needed to talk to a certain maid of honor, for whom I had been watching out for days now, without success. As regards the information I was keeping from my master, any remorse I might feel was somewhat tempered by the thought that, while it was true that Angélica de Alquézar had led me into the trap, that trap would never have been possible without the captain’s stubborn or suicidal collaboration. I had sufficient judgment to make these distinctions, and when you are nearly seventeen years old, no one is entirely a hero, apart from yourself, of course.
“Is this place safe?” I asked Cagafuego, as a way of changing the subject.
Cagafuego gave a fierce, gap-toothed smile.
“Tight as a drum. The law wouldn’t come around here, not even if you paid them. And if some snitch was to peach on him, the captain can always climb out of the window and onto the roof. The captain’s not the only one in trouble around here. If any bluebottles was to turn up, there’s comrades aplenty to sound the alarm. And if that happens, he just has to scarper.”
My master had not ceased looking at me all this time.
“We have to talk,” he said.
Cagafuego raised one huge hand to his eyebrows by way of a farewell.
“While you’re talkin’ and if you don’t need anythin’ else, Captain, this here herdsman’s goin’ to take a turn around his pastures to see how Maripérez is gettin’ on with the little bit of business she’s got in hand. Like they say, the eye of the master fattens the mare.”
He opened the door and stood silhouetted for a moment against the gray light of the gallery.
“Besides,” he said, “and I mean no disrespect, you never can tell when you might run headfirst into the law and however plucky you might be and however hard you hold out when they plays you like a guitar, it’s always easier to keep quiet about what you don’t know than to keep quiet about what you do know.”
“An excellent philosophy, Bartolo,” the captain said with a smile. “Aristotle couldn’t have put it better.”
Cagafuego scratched the back of his neck.
“I don’t know how brave or not that don Aristotle was, nor how he would stand up to three turns on the rack and never say ‘Nones,’ as is set down by a scribe that yours truly here once did. But you and I know tormentors what could make a stone sing.”
He left, closing the door behind him. I took out the purse that don Francisco de Quevedo had given me and placed it on the table. With an absent air, my master piled up the gold coins.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me what you were doing the other night in Camino de las Minillas.”
I swallowed hard and again stared down at the puddle of rainwater forming around my feet, then back at the captain. I felt as stunned as a wife in a play does when she discovers her husband in the dark with his mistress.
“You know what I was doing, Captain. I was following you.”
“Why?”
“I was worried about . . . ”
I stopped. The expression on my master’s face had grown so somber that the words died on my lips. His pupils, which had been very dark in the dim light from the window, grew suddenly so small and steely that they seemed to pierce me like knives. I had seen that look on other occasions, occasions that often ended with a man bleeding to death on the ground. I felt afraid.
Then I gave a deep sigh and told him everything, from start to finish.
“I love her,” I said when I had done.
And I said this as if it entirely justified my actions. The captain had got up and was standing at the window, watching the rain.
“Very much?” he asked pensively.
“Too much to put into words.”
“Her uncle is the royal secretary.”
I understood the implications of these words, which were more warning than reproach. However, they showed on what slippery ground we stood. Apart from the matter of whether or not Luis de Alquézar did or didn’t know—Malatesta had, after all, worked for him before—the question was whether or not Angélica was part of the conspiracy, or whether her uncle or others, without being directly involved themselves, were trying to take advantage of the situation and climbing aboard a wagon that was already in motion.
“She is also,” added the captain, “one of the queen’s maids of honor.”
This, it was true, was no small thing either. Then I suddenly caught what he meant by these last words and froze. The idea that our queen could have anything to do with the intrigue was not so very ridiculous. Even a queen is a woman, I thought. She can feel jealousy just as keenly as a kitchen maid.
“But then why involve you?” the captain wondered out loud. “I was more than enough.”
I thought for a while.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It would provide the executioner with another head to chop off, I suppose. But you’re right, if the queen were involved, it would make sense if one of her maids of honor was too.”
“Or perhaps someone simply wants to make it seem that way.”
I looked at him, startled. He had gone over to the table and was studying the little pile of gold coins.
“Hasn’t it occurred to you that someone might want to lay the blame for the incident on the queen?”
I stared at him, openmouthed, aghast at the sinister implications of such an idea.
“After all,” the captain went on, “as well as being a deceived wife, she’s also French. Imagine the situation: the king dies, Angélica disappears, you’re arrested along with me, and on the rack you reveal that it was one of the queen’s maids of honor who lured you into the trap . . .”