“You talk too much, but not about what interests me.”
“What do you expect? We men from Palermo have our rules.”
He had obediently moved a few inches away from the table and was studying the barrel of the pistol gleaming in the candlelight.
“How’s the boy?”
“Fine. At least he’s alive and well.”
Malatesta’s smile broadened into a knowing grimace.
“Yes, I see you managed to leave him out of it. I congratulate you. He’s a plucky lad, and good with a sword, too. However, I fear you may be leading him astray. He’ll end up like you and me. And speaking of endings, I suppose my life is about to end here and now.”
This was neither a lament nor a protest, merely a logical conclusion. Malatesta again looked at the woman, for longer this time, before turning back to Alatriste.
“A shame,” he said serenely. “I would have preferred to have this conversation elsewhere, sword in hand, with time to spare. But I don’t somehow think you’re going to give me that chance.” He held Alatriste’s gaze, the expression on his face half inquisitive, half sarcastic. “Because you’re not, are you?”
He was still calmly smiling, his eyes fixed on the captain’s.
“Have you ever thought,” he said suddenly, “how very alike we are, you and I?”
A likeness, thought Alatriste, that would last for only a few seconds more, and with that, he steadied his hand, and prepared to squeeze the trigger. Malatesta had read this sentence as clearly as if it had been written on a poster and placed before his eyes.. His face tensed and his smile froze on his lips.
“I’ll see you in hell,” he said.
At that moment, the woman—hands tied behind her, eyes wild, the gag muffling a cry of fierce desperation—stood up and hurled herself headfirst at Alatriste. He stepped lightly aside to avoid her and, just for an instant, lowered the pistol. For Gualterio Malatesta, however, that instant meant the slender difference between life and death. The woman fell at Alatriste’s feet, and in the precious moment Alatriste spent avoiding her and trying to readjust his aim, Malatesta knocked the candle off the table with one swipe of his hand—thus plunging the room into darkness—and immediately crouched down to pick up his discarded weapons. The pistol shot broke the windowpanes above his head, and the flash lit up the gleaming steel blade already in his hand. “Christ’s blood,” thought Alatriste, “he’s going to escape. Either that or kill me.”
The woman lay groaning on the floor, thrashing about like a wild thing. Alatriste leapt over her, threw down the discharged pistol, and unsheathed his sword. He would just have time to stab Malatesta before he got to his feet—if, that is, he could find him in the darkness. He lunged several times, but met only thin air. As he wheeled around, a blow came from behind, hard and fast, piercing his jerkin and only failing to pierce his flesh because it caught him sideways. The sound of a chair scraping the floor helped him to orient himself better, and he headed in that direction, blade foremost, and this time his sword found the enemy. “So there you are,” he thought, reaching with his left hand for one of the pistols. Malatesta, however, had noticed the pistols already and was in no mood to let him fire. He hurled himself violently upon the captain, lashing out and striking him with the guard of his sword. No words were spoken, no insults or threats exchanged. The two men were saving their breath for the struggle, and all that could be heard were grunts and panting. “If he’s had time to pick up his dagger,” thought the captain suddenly, “I’m done for.” He forgot about his pistol and felt for his own knife. Malatesta guessed what he was up to and reached out to try and stop him; they rolled across the floor with a great clatter of furniture and broken crockery. At such close quarters, there was no room for swords. Finally, Alatriste managed to free his left hand and take out his own dagger. He drew back and stabbed wildly twice. The first stab slashed his opponent’s clothes, the second struck nothing at all, and there was no time for a third blow. There came the sound of the door being wrenched violently open and, for a moment, he saw the fleeing figure of the Italian framed in a rectangle of light.
I was feeling very happy. It had stopped raining; over the city’s rooftops, the day was dawning, bright and sunny, with a clear blue sky; and I was going in through the palace door, at the side of don Francisco de Quevedo. We had walked across the square, pushing our way through the idlers who had been assembling there since before daybreak and were being kept in check by the uniformed lancers standing guard. The curious, talkative people of Madrid were ingenuously loyal to their monarchs, always ready to forget their own miseries and take inexplicable delight in applauding the luxury in which those who governed them lived. On that particular morning, they were happily waiting to see the king and queen, whose carriages stood outside the Alcázar. Any royal journey always brought out the crowds and, inevitably, involved legions of courtiers, gentlemen of the household, handmaids, servants, and carriages. Rafael de Cózar and his theater company, including María de Castro, would also be setting off for El Escorial, if, indeed, they had not done so already, for The Sword and the Dagger was to be performed in the gardens of that palace-cum-monastery at the beginning of the following week. As for the members of the royal entourage, they were—despite the strict sumptuary laws in force—all competing with one another in ostentation and lavishness of dress. Assembled outside the palace was a colorful collection of coaches emblazoned with coats of arms; there were good mules and even better horses, liveried footmen, silks, brocades, and other adornments, for both those with the means and those without would gladly spend their last maravedí on cutting a fine figure at court. In that world of pretense and appearances, nobles and plebeians would have pawned their own coffin to prove that they were of pure blood and better than their neighbor. As Lope said:
Tie me up and burn me
If I couldn’t make a million
Out of taxing every would-be don
Just one maravedí.
“It still amazes me,” said don Francisco, “that you managed to convince Guadalmedina.”
“I didn’t convince him of anything,” I said. “He convinced himself. I merely told him what had happened, and he believed me.”
“Perhaps he wanted to believe you. He knows Alatriste and knows precisely what he would and wouldn’t do. The idea of a conspiracy makes much more sense. It’s one thing to dig your heels in about a woman, but quite another to kill a king.”
We were walking past the granite pillars to the main staircase. The queen’s courtyard, where a large number of courtiers were waiting for the king and queen to come down, was filled by the golden light of the rising sun that glinted on the capitals and on the two-headed eagles above the arches. Don Francisco politely doffed his hat to a few court acquaintances. He was dressed, as usual, entirely in black grosgrain, with a ribbon as hatband, a red cross on his breast, and a gold-hilted court sword at his waist. I was no less elegant in my light woolen costume and my cap, my dagger stuck crosswise in my belt at the back. A manservant had placed my traveling case, containing my day-to-day clothes and a pair of clean undergarments neatly folded by La Lebrijana, in the carriage occupied by the Marquis of Liche’s servants, with whom don Francisco had arranged transport for me. He had a seat in the marquis’s carriage, a privilege which, as usual, he justified in his own way:
I’ll not bend the knee to a noble house,