“Don’t worry,” he lied. “I just want to talk to him.”
Alatriste had used the time to confirm to himself that he was in the right place. Besides observing the short black cape, the shirts, collars, and other clothes in the house, all of which might have belonged to anyone, he had opened a chest and found a pair of good pistols, a flask of gunpowder, a small bag of bullets, a knife as sharp as a razor, a coat of mail, and a few letters and documents evidently giving coded place names and itineraries. There were also two books which he was now leafing curiously through, having first loaded the two pistols and placed them in his belt, leaving Cagafuego’s on the table. One of the books was, surprisingly enough, an Italian translation of Pliny’s
Natural History
, printed in Venice, which, for a moment, made the captain doubt that the owner of the book and the man he was waiting for could be the same person. The other book was in Spanish and the title made him smile:
God’s Politics, Christ’s Governance
, by don Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas.
There was a noise outside. Fear flickered in the woman’s eyes. Diego Alatriste picked up the pistol from the table and, trying not to make the floorboards creak, positioned himself to one side of the door. Everything happened with extraordinary simplicity: the door opened and in walked Gualterio Malatesta, shaking his sodden cloak and hat. Then, ever so gently, the captain pressed the barrel of the pistol to Malatesta’s head.
8. OF MURDERERS AND BOOKS
“She has nothing to do with any of this,” said Malatesta.
He put his sword and dagger down on the floor, kicking them away from him as Alatriste ordered. He was looking at the woman who was still sitting, bound and gagged, on the chair.
“It doesn’t matter,” said the captain, keeping the pistol pressed to Malatesta’s head. “She’s my trump card.”
“Well played, I must say. Do you kill women, too?”
“If necessary. As do you, I imagine.”
Malatesta nodded thoughtfully. His pockmarked face remained impassive, although the scar above his right eye gave him a slight squint. Finally, he turned to look at the captain. In the dim light from the candle, Alatriste could see his black clothes, sinister air, and cruel, dark eyes. A smile appeared beneath Malatesta’s mustache.
“This is your second visit here.”
“And it will be my last.”
Malatesta paused before replying:
“You had a pistol in your hand on that occasion, too.”
Alatriste remembered it well: the same bed, the same miserable room, the wounded man’s eyes like those of a dangerous snake. The Italian had commented then: “With luck I’ll arrive in hell in time for supper.”
“I’ve often regretted not using it,” retorted Alatriste.
The cruel smile grew wider. “We’re in agreement there,” the smile seemed to say, “pistol-shots are full stops and doubts are dangerous ellipses.” He noticed and recognized the two pistols the captain had found in the chest and which he was now wearing in his belt.
“You shouldn’t go wandering about on your own in Madrid, you know,” he remarked with grim solicitude. “They say your skin isn’t worth a Ceuta penny.”
“Who says?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a rumor.”
“Worry about your own skin.”
Malatesta gave that same pensive nod, as if he appreciated the advice. Then he looked at the woman, whose terrified eyes kept shifting from him to Alatriste.
“There’s just one thing in all this that I find rather insulting, Captain. The fact that you didn’t simply shoot me as soon as I came through the door means that you think I’m going to blab.”
Alatriste did not reply. Some things one took for granted.
“I can understand you feeling curious, though,” added the Italian after a moment. “But perhaps I
can
tell you something without detriment to myself.”
“Why me?” Alatriste asked.
Malatesta made a gesture with his hands as if to say “Why not?” and then indicated the pitcher of water on the table and asked for a little to slake his parched throat. The captain shook his head.
“For various reasons,” Malatesta went on, resigned to going thirsty. “You have unfinished business with a number of people, not just me. Besides, your affair with the Castro woman was like a gift from the gods.” His malicious smile grew wider. “How could we miss the opportunity of putting it all down to jealousy, especially with a man like you involved, always so ready to reach for his sword? It’s just a shame they played that trick on us, replacing the king with an actor.”
“Did you know who the man was?”
Malatesta tutted glumly, like a professional disgusted at his own ineptitude.
“I thought I did,” he said, “although, afterward, it turned out that I didn’t.”
“You certainly had your sights set very high.”
Malatesta regarded Alatriste almost with surprise, almost ironically.
“High or low, crown or bishop, it’s all the same to me,” he said. “The only king I value is the one in a pack of cards, and the only God I know is the one I use to blaspheme with. It’s a great relief when life and the passing years strip away certain things. Everything is so much simpler, so much more practical. Don’t you feel that? Ah, no, of course, I am forgetting. You’re a soldier. Or, rather, you pay lip service to such things; because people like you need words like “king,” “true religion,” “my country,” and all that, just to get by and to feel you’re doing the decent thing. I find it hard to believe, really, in a man of your experience, and given the times we’re living through.”
Having said this, he stopped and looked at the captain, as if expecting him to reply.
“Then again,” he added, “your exemplary loyalty as a subject didn’t prevent you from getting into a squabble with His Catholic Majesty over a woman. But then a hair from a quim has done in far more men than the noose ever has.
Puttana Eva!
”
He sneered mockingly and fell silent, before whistling his usual little tune through his teeth. Ignoring the pistol pointing at him, he gazed distractedly about the room. He was, of course, only pretending to be distracted. Alatriste knew that the Italian’s wary eyes would miss nothing. “If I drop my guard for a moment,” he thought, “the bastard will be on me.”
“Who’s paying you?”
Malatesta’s hoarse, discordant laugh filled the room.
“Fie on you, Captain. Such a question is hardly appropriate between men like us.”
“Is Luis de Alquézar involved?”
Malatesta remained silent, his face expressionless. He was looking at the books Alatriste had been leafing through.
“I see you’ve taken an interest in my reading matter,” he said at last.
“Yes, I was surprised,” agreed the captain. “I didn’t know you were such an educated son of a whore.”
“I see no contradiction.”
Malatesta glanced at the woman who was still sitting motionless in the chair. Then he touched the scar over his right eye.
“Books help you to understand life, don’t you think? You can even find in them a justification for lying and betraying . . . for killing.”
He had placed one hand on the table as he spoke. Alatriste drew back prudently, and with a movement of the pistol indicated that the Italian do the same.
“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.”