The Spain of the fourth Philip, like that of his predecessors, was enchanted with the ritual burning of heretics and Jews. An auto-da-fé attracted thousands of spectators, from aristocracy to the lowest townsman. And when one was celebrated in Madrid, it was witnessed from the loges of honor by Their Majesties the king and queen. Even Queen Isabel, who, because she was young, and French, was at first repelled by such activities, eventually became an enthusiast, like everyone else. The only thing Spanish the daughter of Henri the Béarnaise never accepted was to live in El Escorial, which she always found too cold, too grand, and too sinister for her taste. She was, however, subjected to that vexation posthumously: having never wanted to set foot inside it, she was buried there after her death. Though it is not such a bad place to be, God knows, laid to rest alongside the imposing tombs of Emperor Charles the Fifth and his son the great Philip, ancestors of our fourth Austrian monarchy. Thanks to whom—great leaders that they were, whether for bad or ill, and to the despair of Turks, French, Dutch, English, and the whore who birthed them all—Spain, for a century and a half, had Europe and the world by their tender testicles.

But let us return to the bonfire. Preparations for the fiesta, in which, to my misfortune, I had a reserved place, began a day or two before the event. There was great activity by carpenters and other workmen in the Plaza Mayor, where they were constructing a high platform fifty feet long facing an amphitheater of stair-stepped benches, draperies, tapestries, and damasks. Not even for the wedding of Their Majesties had such industry and facilities been on display. All the streets into the plaza were blocked so that coaches and horses would not clog free movement, and for the royal family, a canopy had been rigged on Los Mercaderes, as that location offered the most shade. Since the auto was a long ceremony, taking the whole day, there were stands, protected from the sun by a canvas, where one could get a cool drink and something to eat. It was decided that for the convenience of the august persons of the king and queen, they would enter their loge from the palace of the Conde de Barajas, using an elevated passageway over Cava San Miguel that communicated with the count’s houses on the plaza.

Expectations resulting from this level of preparation were so high that vying for tickets to a seat at a balconied window often deteriorated into a battle royal. Many people of influence paid good ducats to the Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty’s household to obtain the best locations, including ambassadors, grandees, the king’s courtiers, council presidents, and even His Holiness the Papal Nuncio, who never missed a bullfight, a tournament of tilting, or an outdoor roasting, not even for a fumata blanca in Rome.

On a day like this, meant to be memorable, the Holy Office wanted to kill several partridges with a single shot. Resolved to undermine the Conde de Olivares’s policy of rapprochement with the Jewish Portuguese bankers, the most radical inquisitors of the Supreme Council had planned a spectacular auto-da-fé that would strike fear into the heart of any who were not secure in the purity of their blood. The message was clear. However much of Olivares’s money and favor they might have, Portuguese of Hebrew blood would never be safe in Spain. The Inquisition, relentlessly appealing to the religious conscience of our lord and king—as irresolute and easily influenced as a young man as he was when old, pleasant by nature but lacking character—preferred a ruined nation to one whose faith was threatened. And that preference, which in the long run had its effect—predictably, a most disastrous effect—upon Olivares’s economic plans, was the principal reason why the trial was being hastened: to serve as an efficacious example to the public. What ordinarily would take months, even years, of assiduous instruction was completed in a few weeks’ time.

Because of the haste, details of complex protocol were greatly simplified. Sentences were usually read to the penitents the night prior to the dreaded day, following a solemn procession of officials carrying the green cross destined for the plaza and the white one that would be raised above the stake. This time they were left to be made public on the day of the auto-da-fé, when everyone was already present for the festivities. Prisoners destined for the auto had arrived from the dungeons of Toledo the day before. They—we—were about twenty, and were housed in cells the Holy Office maintained on Calle de los Premostenses, darkly referred to as Calle de la Inquisición, very near the Santo Domingo plaza.

I was brought there on a Saturday night, having communicated with no one since I was taken from my cell and placed in a coach with closed curtains and a heavy guard. I never left the coach until I descended by torchlight in Madrid among the armed civilian familiares of the Inquisition. They led me down to a cell, where I was given a tolerable dinner, a blanket, and a straw mattress. I anticipated a restless night as I listened to footsteps and the noise of locks and bolts outside my door, voices coming and going, a lot of scurrying about, and objects being rolled and dragged. With which I began to fear that I could look forward to a very difficult day on the morrow.

I racked my brain, searching through dangerous moments I had witnessed in the playhouses of the comedias, hoping that, as always happened there, I would find a way out. At that point, I was certain that whatever my crime, I would not be burned because of my age. But the prospect of beatings and imprisonment, perhaps for life, were strong possibilities, and I was not certain which seemed worse. Nevertheless, the resilience of youth, the terrible times I had survived, and the exhaustion of the journey, soon took their natural course, and after a period of wakefulness in which I asked myself over and over how I had come to that sad fate, I sank into a merciful and restorative sleep that eased the restlessness of thought.

Two thousand people had stayed up all night to be assured of a place in the Plaza Mayor, and by seven in the morning there was no room for another soul. Blending in among the multitude, with the brim of his hat over his face and a short cape thrown over his shoulders and across the lower part of his face, Diego Alatriste made his way toward the de la Carne section of the plaza. The arches were jammed with people of every state and condition: hidalgos, clergy, artisans, servant girls, merchants, lackeys, students, rogues, beggars, and assorted rabble pushed and shoved in their quest for a good view. The balconied windows of the surrounding buildings were black with people of quality: gold chains, silver trimmings, fine cottons, one-hundred-escudo laces, nuns’ habits, and men clad in the uniforms of chivalric orders, some bedecked with the insignia of the Golden Fleece. And below in the street, whole families assembled, including children, carrying baskets of victuals and drinks for luncheon and tea. Mead vendors, water sellers, and peddlers of sweets made hay while the sun shone down. A merchant with religious prints and rosaries hawked his merchandise at the top of his lungs; on a day such as this, he argued, these articles carried the blessing of the pope and plenary indulgences. A few feet away, a man who claimed to have been mutilated in Flanders, but who had never glimpsed a pike in his life, was plaintively begging, and squabbling over his place with a malingering cripple and another man hoarsely whining about scald head, a condition visible in the scales on his hairless head. Elegant young bloods were punning and playing with words, and whores were cajoling and wheedling. One woman, pretty but not wearing a mantle, and another who was, but whose mud-ugly face showed evidence of mercury poisoning—the kind who swore not to stroll down the garden path until they captured a grandee of Spain or a Genoese banker—were pleading with a common artisan, who had been flashing his sword and putting on airs, to loosen his purse strings and treat them to a tray of fruit or some candied almonds. And the poor man, who in all the excitement, had already let go of the two pieces of eight he had on him, congratulated himself for not bringing more—unaware, foolish man he was, that true señores never pay, or even pretend to; instead they make a show of not paying.

It was a luminous day, perfect for the momentous events to come, and the captain, his gray-green eyes dazzled by the blue spilling down the eaves onto the plaza, squinted against the sun as he elbowed his way through the crowd. It smelled of sweat, of too many people, of fiesta. He felt a hopeless desperation building inside him, impotence at confronting something that exceeded his limited forces. That machinery of the Inquisition was moving inexorably forward, leaving no opening for anything other than resignation and fear. He could do nothing; he himself was not safe there. He roamed among the crowd with his mustache pointed over his shoulder, retreating the minute someone looked at him a little longer than was wont. In truth, he kept moving just to be doing something, not to be glued to one of the columns in the arches. He asked himself where the devil don Francisco de Quevedo might be at this hour. His journey, whatever the result, was now the one thread of hope before the inevitable.

It was a thread he felt snap when he heard the trumpets of the guard, making him turn and look toward the crimson canopy-covered balcony on the façade of Los Mercaderes. Our lord and king, the queen, and the court were taking their seats amid the applause of the throng. Our fourth Philip, grave, impassive as a statue, made not a flicker of movement, not a foot, not a hand, not his head, as blond as the gold passementerie and the chain across his chest. Our queen wore yellow satin and a headdress of plumes and jewels. Guards with halberds took up posts beneath Their Majesties’ balcony, Spanish on one side and German on the other, archers in the center, all of them impressive in their rigid order.

It was a handsome spectacle for anyone not in danger of being burned alive. The green cross was installed above the platform, and on the fronts of the buildings were hung, in alternating sequence, the coat-of-arms of His Majesty and that of the Inquisition: a cross between a sword and an olive branch. Everything was rigorously canonical. The spectacle could begin.

They had brought us from our cells at six-thirty in the morning, between constables and the familiares of the Holy Office armed with swords, pikes, and harquebuses. We were led in a procession through the Santo Domingo plaza, down San Ginés, and from there, crossing Calle Mayor, into the plaza by way of Calle de los Boteros. Marching in file, we were escorted by armed guards and mourning-clad familiares carrying sinister black staffs. There were clerics in surplices, dirges, lugubrious drums, cloth-covered crosses, and masses of people in the streets. And in the center of it all, here we came. First, the blasphemers, then the bigamous; after them, the sodomites and the Judaizers and the followers of Mohammed; and last, the practitioners of witchcraft. Each group included wax, cardboard, and rag representations of those who had died in prison and those who were fugitives, to be burned in effigy.

I was near the middle of the procession, among the minor Judaizers, so dazed that I thought I was in a dream from which, with a little effort and great relief, I would awake at any moment. We were all wearing sanbenitos, long white garments the guards had dressed us in as they took us from our cells. Mine bore a red St. Andrew’s cross, but the others were painted with the flames of Hell. There were men, women, even a girl about my age. Some were weeping, and others were stone-faced, like the young priest who had denied at mass that God was in the host, the forma sagrada, and who refused to retract what he had said. One woman denounced as a witch by her neighbors, too old to stand on her own, and a man whose legs had been crippled during his torture, were riding mules. The most serious offenders were wearing cone hats, and all of us were carrying candles. Elvira de la Cruz was clad in sanbenito and cone hat, and when we were lined up, she was among the last. After we began to walk, I could no longer see her. I went with my head bowed, afraid I would see someone I knew among the people watching us pass by. As Your Mercies may imagine, I was mortified with shame.

As the procession filed into the plaza, the captain searched for me among the penitents. He could not find me until they made us climb up onto the platform and take a seat on the graduated steps, each of us between two familiares. Even then he had difficulty, for as I have told you I tried to keep my head down; in addition, the platform was easily seen from the windows, but the view of people standing in the arches was obstructed. The sentences had not yet been read publicly, so Alatriste was tremendously relieved when he saw that I was among the group of minor Judaizers, and not wearing the cone hat. That at least eliminated the stake as my possible fate.

Dominicans in their black-and-white habits could be seen moving among the black-clad constables of the Inquisition, organizing everything. The representatives of other orders—all except the Franciscans, who had refused to attend because they considered it a grave insult to be assigned a place behind the Augustinians—were already in their seats in places of honor, along with the Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty’s household and councilors from Castile, Aragon, Italy, Portugal, Flanders, and the Indies. Beside the Inquisitor General, in the area reserved for the Tribunal of Six Judges, was Fray Emilio Bocanegra, bony and malevolent. He was savoring his day of triumph, as Luis de Alquézar must have been, seated in the loge of the highest palace officials, close to the balcony where at that moment our lord and king was swearing to defend the Catholic Church and to persecute heretics and apostates who opposed the true Faith.

The Conde de Olivares occupied a more discreet window to the right of their august majesties, and was looking very grim. It escaped very few who knew the secrets at court that this entire performance was in his honor.

The reading of the sentences began. One by one, penitents were led before the tribunal and there, after a detailed recitation of their crimes and sins, their fate was announced. Those who were to be lashed, or who were being sent to the galleys, moved on, roped together; then those destined for the stake followed, hands bound. Those latter victims were said to be “relapsed”; for since the Inquisition was ecclesiastical, it could not shed one drop of blood, and in order to do lip service to the rules, the prisoners were said to have “fallen away” and were handed over to secular justice. Burning them at the stake prevented the profuse bloodletting of other measures. I leave Your Mercies to judge the unholy logic of that process.

These readings, the abjurations de levi and de vehementi—lighter and stronger recantations—were met with screams of anguish from those sentenced to unendurable punishment, resignation in others, and the public’s approval when the maximum penalty was applied. The priest who denied the presence of Christ in the host was condemned to the stake amid roaring applause and nods of satisfaction. After brutally scourging his hands, tongue, and tonsure as a sign that he was stripped of his sacred orders, his tormentors led him to the stake, which had been set up on the esplanade outside the Puerta de Alcalá. The old woman accused of witchcraft—of too easily finding treasures hidden by fleeing Jews and Moors—was sentenced to a hundred lashes, with the additional punishment of life imprisonment—and little that mattered, for such an elderly lady! A bigamist got off with two hundred lashes and exile for ten years, the first six to be spent rowing in the galleys. Two blasphemers received exile and three years in Oran. A cobbler and his wife, reconciled Jews, were sentenced to life imprisonment and a de vehementi abjuration. The twelve-year-old girl, a Judaizer, received a sentence of wearing an identifiable brown habit and serving two years of confinement, at the end of which she would be placed in a home with a Christian family to be instructed in the Faith. Her sixteen-year-old sister, a Judaizer, was condemned to life imprisonment without appeal. Their own father, a Portuguese tanner, had denounced them, under torture; he himself was sentenced to a de vehementi abjuration before being burned at the stake. He was the man who had been brought in on muleback because he could not walk. The mother, her whereabouts unknown, would be burned in effigy.

Accompanying the priest and the tanner on their way to the stake were a merchant and his wife, also Portuguese Jews, an apprentice silversmith—clearly a grievous sin—and Elvira de la Cruz. Everyone but the priest recanted in due form, and showed repentance. They would be mercifully garroted before being burned. The grotesque effigy of don Vicente de la Cruz, and those of his two sons, the dead one and the one who could not be found, were set atop long poles. His daughter wore the white sanbenito and conical hat, and in that garb was led before the judges to be read her sentence. With bone-chilling indifference, she recanted, as asked, all the crimes she had committed and would ever commit: being a Judaizer, a criminal conspirator, and violating a sacred place, among other charges. She looked totally forsaken up on that platform, head low, her Inquisitorial robes hanging like a sack over her tortured body. After recanting, she heard her sentence confirmed with resigned apathy. I was moved to pity despite the accusations she had made against me, or had allowed to be made. Poor girl, she was the victim and instrument of brutes without scruples or conscience, however much they paraded their God and their holy faith.

After Elvira was taken away, I saw that it was not long before my turn. The plaza began to whirl before me; I was numb with terror and shame. Desperate, I looked for the face of Captain Alatriste or some friend to find comfort, but I found nothing, not one trace of pity or sympathy. Nothing but a wall of hostile faces, jeering, expectant, sinister. The face a mob adopts when treated to free barbaric spectacles.

But Alatriste saw me. He was again beside one of the columns of the arches, and from there could see the bench where I sat with other penitents, each of us flanked by a pair of constables as mute as stones. Preceding me in the fateful ritual was a barber accused of blasphemy and of making a pact with the Devil—a short, wretched-looking man who sobbed with his face in his hands because no one was going to save him from his hundred lashes and years of flogging fish in the galleys of our lord and king.

The captain moved on a little, placing himself where I could see him if I looked in that direction, but I was not capable of seeing anything, sunk as I was in the torment of my own nightmare. Beside Alatriste, a pillicock garbed in his best was ridiculing those of us on the platform, pointing us out, between gibes, to his companions, and at a certain moment he made some jeering comment about me. Up to that point, the captain’s habitual restraint had tempered his impotent rage, but now that anger made him turn, without a moment’s reflection and, as if accidentally, swing an elbow into the churl’s gut. The man whirled about with an angry frown, but his protest died in his throat when he looked into the gray-green eyes of Diego Alatriste, staring at him with such menacing coldness that he closed up like a tulip at eventide.

Again Alatriste moved on, and as he did, he could better see Luis de Alquézar in his loge. The royal secretary stood out from other officials because of the embroidered cross of Calatrava on his chest. He was in black, and his round head with its feathery hair was rigid atop the starched collar: he might have been a figure in a painting. His clever eyes, however, were darting from side to side, taking in every detail of the events. At times that evil gaze focused on the fanatic countenance of Fray Emilio Bocanegra, and in their sinister immobility his eyes seemed to have communicated perfectly. At that moment and in that place they were the embodiment of true power in that court of venal functionaries and fanatic priests. They acted under the diffident regard of the fourth Hapsburg, who was watching his subjects condemned to the stake without lifting an eyebrow, reacting only to turn from time to time to the queen to explain, behind the cover of a glove or a blue-veined hand, some detail of the spectacle. Elegant, chivalrous, affable, and weak, he was the august plaything of his advisors. Hieratical, incapable of seeing earth, he gazed always toward heaven. Unsuited for bearing upon his royal shoulders the grand heritage of his ancestors, he was dragging us along the road to the abyss.

My fate was beyond remedy, and had the plaza not been swarming with catchpoles, constables, familiares, and royal guards, perhaps Diego Alatriste would have done something barbarous, desperate, and heroic. At least I like to believe that he would, given the opportunity. But all was futile; time was running against him and against me. Even should don Francisco de Quevedo arrive, once my custodians pulled me to my feet and led me toward the dais where the sentences were being read, neither our lord and king nor the Pope of Rome could alter my fate. And no one knew what he might bring, in any case, that would alter anything, even should he arrive in the dwindling few seconds.

The captain was agonizing over that very knowledge when he became aware that Luis de Alquézar was looking directly at him. Actually it was impossible to know that, for Alatriste was nearly invisible beneath his hat in the midst of that mob of people. Yet he was sure that Alquézar’s eyes had been focused on him; then he saw the royal secretary catch Fray Emilio Bocanegra’s eye, and he, as if he had just received a message, turned to scour the crowd. Alquézar slowly lifted one hand to his chest, and he seemed to be searching for someone among the throng to Alatriste’s left, for his eyes were fixed on a point there. The hand slowly rose and fell, twice, and the secretary again looked toward the captain. Alatriste turned and sighted two or three hats moving toward the place where he was standing beneath the arches.

The captain’s instinct took charge before his mind could analyze the situation. Swords were useless in such a tightly packed crowd, so he readied the dagger he wore at his left side, freeing it from the tail of his short cape. Then he faded back among the spectators. Imminent danger had always given him a clear mind and a practical economy of actions and words. He moved along the row of columns, and saw the hats stop, indecisive, at the spot where he had been. He quickly glanced toward Luis de Alquézar’s loge, where the secretary was still scrutinizing the throng below; the rigid impassivity demanded by protocol could not hide his irritation.

Alatriste moved on toward the de la Carne arches and the other side of the plaza, and peered up at the platform from that angle. He could not see me, but he did have a good view of Alquézar’s profile. He was grateful that he had not brought his pistol—they were forbidden, and among so many people it was dangerous to move about with one on him—for he might not have been able to suppress the impulse to leap onto the platform and roast the secretary’s chestnuts with one shot. But you will die, he swore mentally, eyes drilling into the royal secretary’s despicable face. And until the day you do, you will remember my visit. You will never sleep easily again.

They had brought the barber accused of blasphemy to the dais, and were beginning the long relation of his crime and sentence. Alatriste thought he remembered that I came after the barber, and he was trying to edge a little closer so he could see me, when he again caught sight of the hats, now dangerously close. These were obviously tenacious men. One had dropped back, as if to search in a different part of the crowd; but two of them—a black felt and another brown with a long plume—were progressing in his direction, breasting their way through the sea of humanity.

There was no choice but to take cover, so the captain had to give up trying to see me and retreat beneath the arches. He would not have the ghost of a chance among that throng; all anyone had to do was call upon the minions of the Holy Office and every man down to the last idler would join in the chase. The opportunity to slip away was only a few steps farther on: a narrow alley with two sharp turns that led to the Plaza de la Provincia. On days like these, people used the alley to relieve themselves, despite the crosses and saints the residents placed at each corner to discourage that practice. The captain walked in that direction, and just before plunging into the narrow passageway, in which no more than one person could move at a time, he glanced over his shoulder and saw two figures emerging from the crowd, right on his heels.

He did not even venture a longer look. He quickly unfastened his short cape, wrapped it around his left arm to serve as a buckler, and with his right hand unsheathed the vizcaína—to the shock of a poor man emptying his bladder at the first turn, who when he saw the weapon, made fumble-fingered attempts to fasten his breeches as quickly as possible. Ignoring him, Alatriste set one shoulder against the wall, which, like the ground, stunk of urine and filth. A fine place to be knifed, he thought as he took a tighter grip on the vizcaína. A fine place, pardiez, to go to hell in good company.

The first of his pursuers turned into the little alley, and, corralled in that very tight space, Alatriste glimpsed eyes terrified by the gleam of his naked dagger. He even made out a large mustache, shaped like a sword guard, and the thick sidewhiskers of a blustering braggart. Quick as lightning, he bent down and slashed the hamstring of the new arrival. Then in the same upward movement, he slashed his throat. The man fell without time to say “Hail Mary, Mother of…,” sprawling in the alley with his life gushing in red spurts from his gullet.

The man behind him was Gualterio Malatesta, and it was a pity he had not been the first. Alatriste needed only a glance at his lean black silhouette to know who he was. In the haste of his pursuit, and then the surprise of the unexpected encounter, the Italian had not yet drawn a weapon, so he jumped back as his companion slumped dying before him, and as the captain lashed out with a slaughterer’s swing that missed by a thumb’s width. The constriction of the alley left no room for swords, so Malatesta took what cover he could behind his moribund companion. He pulled out his vizcaína, and, like the captain, protecting himself with a cape around his arm, engaged Alatriste at close range, crowding him and skillfully dodging and returning thrusts. Daggers ripped cloth, rang on stone walls, brutally targeted the enemy, and neither of the two uttered a word, saving their breath for more deadly purposes. There was still surprise in the Italian’s eyes—no ti-ri-tu, ta-ta from him this time, the bastard—when the captain’s dagger sank into the flesh beneath the improvised shield of Malatesta’s cape. His companion, an obstacle between them, was with the Devil now, or well on his way.

The Italian reeled from the wound, and as Alatriste leaned toward him over the fallen man, Malatesta’s dagger ripped into his doublet, slicing off buttons and ties as he withdrew it. Arms wrapped in cape and capelet parried thrusts. The men’s faces were so close that the captain felt his enemy’s breath in his eyes before Malatesta spit into them. The captain blinked, blinded, and that allowed his opponent to land a blow with such force that, had the leather of the buffcoat not slowed it, the dagger would have gone in up to the hilt. As it was, the vizcaína sliced through clothing and flesh, and Alatriste felt a chill and a sharp pain when the blade touched his hip bone. Fearing he would faint, he struck at his enemy’s face with the grip of his dagger, and blood gushed from the Italian’s eyebrows, bathing the scars and craters of his skin and trickling from the tips of his thinly trimmed mustache.

Now the gleam of Malatesta’s hard, serpent eyes also reflected fear. Alatriste drew back his arm and stabbed again and again, hitting cape, doublet, air, wall, and finally—twice—human flesh. Malatesta grunted with pain and rage. Blood was streaming into his eyes as he struck out blindly, dangerous for being so unpredictable. Not counting the blow to his forehead, he had at least three wounds.

They fought for an eternity. Both were exhausted, and the wound in the captain’s hip gave him pain, but he was in better shape than Malatesta. It was only a question of time, and the Italian, wild with hatred, resolved to take his enemy with him as he died. It never crossed his mind to ask for mercy, and no one was going to offer it. They were two professionals, aware of what they were doing, sparing with insults and useless words, fighting away for the best and worst they could give. Conscientiously.

Then the third man appeared—he too dressed like a swashbuckler, with a beard and baldric and an array of weapons—at the entrance to the alley. His eyes were like platters when he took in the panorama before him: one man stabbed to death, two still going at each other, and the strip of ground in the alley covered with blood tinting the puddles of urine red.

Stupefied for an instant, he muttered, “Blessed Christ and God Almighty,” and then reached for his dagger. He could not get past Malatesta, however, who was barely holding himself up with the help of the wall, or pass the obstacle of the other comrade to reach the captain. Alatriste, at the limit of his strength, seized the opportunity to rid himself of his prey, who was still slashing at empty space. His dagger cut across Malatesta’s cheek, and finally he had the satisfaction of hearing a curse in Italian. Then the captain threw his short cape over the third man’s vizcaína, and fled down the alley toward La Provincia plaza, his breath burning in his chest.

He was soon out the other end of the alley, straightening his clothing as he left. He had lost his hat in the struggle, and had another man’s blood on his clothing, while his own was dripping down inside his doublet and breeches. Just to be safe, he headed for the church of Santa Cruz, the nearest haven. He stood quietly at the gate, getting his breath back, ready to dash inside the church at the first hint of trouble. His hip was painful. He pulled his handkerchief from his purse and, after feeling for the wound with two fingers and deciding that it was not grave, stuffed the linen into it. But no one came out of the alley, and no one came looking for him. Everyone in Madrid was immersed in the spectacle of the auto-da-fé.

It was almost time for me, and for the poor souls behind me. The inquisitors were, at that moment, sentencing the barber accused of blasphemy to a hundred lashes and four years in the galleys. The poor man was wringing his hands, head bowed, weeping, pleading for mercy that no one was going to grant his wife and four children. In any case, he’d gotten better than the penitents wearing cone hats and riding mules who were on their way to the stakes at the Alcalá gate. Before nightfall they would be grilled to a crisp.

I was next, and I was so desperate and so shamed that I was afraid my legs would fail me. The plaza, the balconies filled with people, the tapestries, the constables and Holy Office familiares on either side of me made my head spin. I wanted to die there, right there, with no further formalities, and without hope. I knew already that I was not going to die, but that my punishment would be a long prison sentence, and perhaps rowing in the galleys after I had served the required years. All that seemed worse than death, to the degree that I had come to envy the arrogance with which the recalcitrant priest went to the stake without recanting or asking for clemency. At that moment it seemed easier to die than to go on living.

They were finished with the barber, and I saw one of the inquisitors in his starched white gorget consult his papers and then look at me. Signed and sealed. I took one last peek at the loge of honor, where our lord and king was leaning a little to one side to whisper something into the ear of the queen, who seemed to smile. They were undoubtedly talking about the hunt, or exchanging pleasantries, or who knows what the bloody hell they were saying, while down below them priests were heartily dispatching their subjects. Beneath the arches, the public was applauding the barber’s sentence and joking about his tears, licking their lips at the prospect of the next offender.

The inquisitor consulted his papers, looked my way once more, and then made a last review. The sun was beating down on the platform like lead, and my shoulders were burning beneath the heavy cloth of the sanbenito. Finally, the inquisitor gathered up his papers and began his slow march toward the lectern, fatuous and self-satisfied, enjoying the suspense he was creating.

I looked at Fray Emilio Bocanegra, motionless on the raised dais, sinister in his black-and-white habit, savoring his victory. I looked at Luis de Alquézar in his loge, cunning, cruel, the cross of Calatrava dishonored by its place on his chest. At least, I told myself—and it was, God knows, my only consolation—Captain Alatriste is not sitting here beside us.

The inquisitor stood before his lectern, slowly, ceremoniously, preparing to read my name. Just then a caballero dressed in black and covered with dust erupted into the loge of the royal secretaries. He was in mud-spattered traveling clothes, high riding boots, and spurs, and he had the appearance of having ridden—whipping his mounts from post house to post house—without rest. He was carrying a leather lettercase, which he took straight to the royal secretary. I saw that they exchanged a few words, and that Alquézar, taking the lettercase with an impatient gesture, opened it, glanced at it, looked in my direction, then at Fray Emilio Bocanegra, and back to me.

The black-clad caballero turned, and at last I recognized him.

It was don Francisco de Quevedo.