Purity of Blood Read Online Free Page B

decent ladies in full-length cloaks. Some of the soldiers were known to Alatriste. They greeted him from a distance, and he responded distractedly, touching the brim of his hat.
    “Are you involved in the matter?” Alatriste asked.
    Don Francisco gave an ambiguous shrug. “Only partly. But for reasons you will soon understand, I must see it through to the end.”
    We kept passing hard-looking men with shifty eyes who sauntered along the iron rails that set off the atrium of the Buen Suceso church. That atrium, and the nearby Calle Montera, were frequented by men with big talk and large swords. Altercations were common, and entry to the church had been blocked so that after a dispute fugitives could not run into the church for sanctuary. There not even the Law could touch them. They called such escape “safe harboring,” or used the euphemisms “going to mass” or “taking a quiet moment of prayer.”
    “Dangerous?” asked Alatriste.
    “Very.”
    “It will involve swordplay, I imagine.”
    “I hope not. But there are greater risks than being wounded.”
    The captain walked on a bit, contemplating in silence the chapel of La Victoria convent that rose behind the houses at the end of the plaza, there at the top of San Jerónimo road. It was not possible to walk around a corner in that city without coming across a church.
    “And why me?” he asked finally.
    Don Francisco laughed again, quietly, as before.
    “’Sblood,” he said. “Because you are my friend. And also because try as they may—executioner, court recorder, scribe—you never sing when you are fated to swing, turning lengths of cords into chords.”
    Thoughtfully, the captain ran his fingers around the neck of his collar. “Well paid, I believe you said.”
    “That I did.”
    “By you, Your Mercy?”
    “How would you have it? The only way I know to get a fire blazing is to feed it.”
    Alatriste’s hand was still at his throat. “Every time you propose a commission that is well paid, it involves placing my neck in the executioner’s noose.”
    “And that is also true in this case,” the poet admitted.
    “By the good Christ, that is fine encouragement you offer me.”
    “It would be deceitful to lie to you.”
    As he answered, the captain’s sarcasm was palpable. “And how is it that you always become involved in such affairs, don Francisco? Only now have you been returned to the king’s favor following your long dispute with the Duque de Osuna.”
    “Therein lies the quid of the quo, my friend,” the poet lamented. “Curse the good nature that leads me into such misadventures. But there are commitments and…my honor is at stake.”
    “And your head, you say.”
    Now it was don Francisco who looked with mocking amusement at Diego Alatriste. “And also yours, Captain, if you decide to accompany me.”
    The “if you decide” was superfluous, and both knew it. Even so, the captain’s pensive smile lingered on his lips. He looked from side to side, skirted a pile of stinking garbage, distractedly greeted a woman with a scandalously low décolletage who winked at him from a wine shop, and finally threw his hands up.
    “And why should I do it? My old tercio leaves for Flanders shortly, and I am seriously considering a change of scenery.”
    “Why should you do it?” Don Francisco stroked his mustache and his goatee. “Well, by my faith, I do not know. Perhaps because when a friend is in difficulty, we have no choice but to fight.”
    “Fight? A moment ago you were rather confident that there would be no dispute.”
    The captain had turned to study don Francisco closely. By now the sky over Madrid was growing dark, and the first shadows stretched toward us from the squalid alleyways that led to the plaza. The outlines of objects were beginning to blur, along with the features of passersby. Someone in one of the shops lighted a lantern. Beneath the brim of don Francisco’s felt hat, the light reflected from the lenses of his