“Jerónimo,” he said.
He again brought his face very close to Garaffa’s, and spoke to him in that same soft, almost confiding tone:
“If I can do this to myself, imagine what I would be capable of doing to you.”
A yellowish liquid, emanating from the prisoner, began to form a puddle around the legs of the chair. Garaffa started to moan and shake and did so for some time. When he finally recovered the power of speech, he let out a prodigious, torrential stream of words, while Olmedilla diligently dipped his pen in the inkwell and made what notes he deemed necessary. Alatriste went into the kitchen in search of some lard or grease or oil to apply to the burn. When he returned, bandaging his forearm with a clean piece of cloth, Olmedilla gave him a look that, in a man of a different humor, would have been one of enormous respect. As for Garaffa, oblivious to everything but his own feelings of terror, he continued to gabble on and on, giving names, places, dates, details of Portuguese banks and gold bars.
At this same hour, I was walking under the long vaulted passageway that leads from the Patio de Banderas into Callejón de la Aljama, in what had once been the Jewish quarter. And, albeit for very different reasons from those of Jerónimo Garaffa, I, too, felt as if I had not one drop of blood in my veins. I stopped at the designated place and, fearing that my legs might give way beneath me, placed one hand on the wall to support myself. My instinct for self-preservation, however, had developed over the previous few years and so, despite everything, I remained clearheaded enough to study the situation carefully—the two exits and those troubling little doors set in the walls. I touched the handle of my dagger, which I wore, as always, tucked into my belt at my back, and then I touched the pouch containing the note that had brought me there. It was worthy of a scene in a play by Tirso de Molina or by Lope de Vega:If you still care for me, now is the moment to prove it. I would like to meet you at eleven o’clock in the passageway leading into the Jewish quarter.
I had received this note at nine o’clock, from a boy who came to the inn in Calle de Tintores, where I was awaiting the captain’s return, seated on the little ledge by the door, watching the people go by. There was no signature, but the name of the sender was as clear to me as the deep wounds in my heart and in my memory. You can imagine the conflicting feelings that troubled me following the receipt of that note, and the delicious anxiety that guided my steps. I will not describe in detail all the anxieties of the lover, which would shame me and bore you, the reader. I will say only that I was then sixteen years old and had never loved a girl, or a woman—nor did I ever love anyone afterward—as I loved Angélica de Alquézar.
It really was most odd. I knew that the note could only be another episode in the dangerous game that Angélica had been playing with me ever since we first met outside the Tavern of the Turk in Madrid. A game that had almost cost me my honor and my life and which, many times more over the years, would cause me to walk along the very brink of the abyss, along the deadly edge of the most delicious blade a woman was capable of creating for the man who, throughout her life, and even at the very moment of her early death, would be both lover and enemy. That moment, however, was still far off, and there I was, on that mild winter morning in Seville, striding along with all the vigor and audacity of my youth, to keep an appointment with the girl—perhaps not so much of a girl now, I thought—who, once, almost three years before, at the Fuente del Acero, had responded to my heartfelt “I would die for you” with a sweet, enigmatic smile and the words “Perhaps you will.”
The Arco de la Aljama was deserted. Leaving behind me the Cathedral tower, which was silhouetted against the sky above the tops of the orange trees, I walked farther along, until I turned the corner and emerged on the other side, where the water in a fountain was singing softly to itself and where the thick, twining branches of creepers hung down from the battlements of the Alcázares, the Royal Palace. There was no one there either. Perhaps it was all a joke, I thought, retracing my steps and plunging back into the shadows of the passageway. That was when I heard a noise behind me, and as I turned, I put my hand on my dagger. One of the doors stood open, and a burly blond soldier in the German guard was observing me in silence. He gestured to me and I approached very cautiously, fearing some trick, but the German appeared to be friendly. He was examining me with professional curiosity, and when I reached his side, he gestured again, this time indicating that I should surrender my dagger. Beneath the enormous fair side-whiskers and mustache he wore a good-natured smile. Then he said something like Komensi herein, which I—having seen more than enough Germans, alive and dead, in Flanders—knew to mean “Come along” or “Come in” or something of the sort. I had no choice, and so I handed him my dagger and went in through the door. “Good morning, soldier.”
Anyone familiar with the portrait of Angélica de Alquézar painted by Diego Velázquez can easily imagine her just a few years younger. The royal secretary’s niece, our queen’s maid of honor, was fifteen years old, and her beauty was much more now than a mere promise. She had matured a great deal since the last time I saw her: the laced bodice of her dress with its silver and coral edgings, matching the full brocade skirt held out stiffly around her hips by a farthingale, suggested curves that had not been there before. Ringlets, of a purer gold than any Araucanian could have found in his mines, still framed those blue eyes, complemented by her smooth, white skin, which I imagined—and would one day find to be so—would have the same texture as silk.
“It’s been a long time,” she said.
She was so beautiful it was painful to look at her. The room, with its Moorish columns, gave onto a small garden in the palace, and the sun behind her created a white halo about her hair. Her smile was the same: mysterious and provocative, with a hint of irony and mischief on her perfect lips.
“Yes, a long time,” I said at last.
The German had withdrawn to the garden, where I glimpsed the wimpled head of a duenna. Angélica sat down on a carved wooden chair and indicated that I should sit on the footstool in front of her. I did as she asked, not fully aware of what I was doing. She was studying me very intently, her hands folded on her lap; from beneath the skirt of her dress emerged one slender satin slipper, and suddenly I was very conscious of my rough sleeveless doublet and darned shirt, my coarse trousers and military gaiters. “Oh, dear God,” I murmured. I imagined the court peacocks and fops of good blood and even better purses, dressed in all their finery, paying amorous compliments to Angélica at galas and gatherings. A jealous shiver pierced my soul.
“I hope,” she said very softly, “that you bear me no malice.”
I remembered—and it took little effort—the humiliation, the prisons of the Inquisition in Toledo, the auto-da-fé in the Plaza Mayor, and the role that Luis de Alquézar’s niece had played in my misfortune. This thought had the virtue of restoring to me the coldness I so needed.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
She took just a second longer than necessary to reply. She was examining me closely, with the same smile on her lips. She seemed pleased by what she saw.
“I don’t want anything,” she said. “I was simply curious to see you again. I recognized you in the square.”
She fell silent for a moment. She looked at my hands and then, again, at my face.
“You’ve grown, sir.”
“So have you.”
She bit her lip slightly and nodded very slowly. The ringlets gently brushed the pale skin of her cheeks, and I adored her.