Arturo Pérez-Reverte: Purity of Blood

A PLUME BOOK

PURITY OF BLOOD

ARTURO PÉREZ-REVERTE is the internationally bestselling author of The Queen of the South and Captain Alatriste . He lives near Madrid, Spain.

“Hardboiled, mordantly funny, unapologetically entertaining.”— Time

“Wonderful, stirring entertainment.”— The New York Times Book Review

“It’s great fun in the tradition of historical swashbucklers such as The Three Musketeers or The Scarlet Pimpernel. ”— The Boston Globe

“Few contemporary writers conjure up derring-do as well as Arturo Pérez-Reverte, a Spanish literary maestro. The true thrill lies in Pérez-Reverte’s deft plotting and thread-the-needle resolutions.”— The Christian Science Monitor

“Thrilling…we have to persuade Putnam to release them as quickly as possible.”— Detroit Free Press

“Grabs the reader from the get-go with its moody evocation of a lost time.”— USA Today

“In between the flash and clanging of swordplay, Alatriste navigates the perilous dungeons of Inquisition-era Madrid. Absolutely riveting from beginning to end.”— Entertainment Weekly

“Pérez-Reverte’s pacing is swift and suspenseful, the narrative voice both crisply cinematic and true to the setting of seventeenth-century Spain…A feast of dark historical detail and believable danger.”— The Denver Post

“ Purity of Blood hits the high note of Captain Alatriste and sustains the series’ uncommon verve.”— The New York Times

“Intrigue and double-dealing in seventeenth-century Madrid…Pérez-Reverte is a master at evoking the particular color of the times, with brothels, taverns, torero arenas, and dark alleyways.”— Los Angeles Times

ALSO BY ARTURO PÉREZ-REVERTE

Captain Alatriste

The Flanders Panel

The Club Dumas The Seville Communion

The Fencing Master

The Nautical Chart

The Queen of the South

PURITY OF BLOOD

Arturo Pérez-Reverte

TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY

Margaret Sayers Peden

A PLUME BOOK

PLUME

Published by Penguin Group

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Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Putnam edition.

Copyright © Arturo Pérez-Reverte, 1997

English translation copyright © Margaret Sayers Peden, 2006

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Putnam edition as follows:

Pérez-Reverte, Arturo.

[Limpieza de sangre. English] Purity of blood / Arturo Pérez-Reverte; translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden.

p. cm. ISBN: 1-4295-2325-5 I. Peden, Margaret Sayers. II. Title. PQ6666.E765L5613 2006 2005050984 863'.64—dc22

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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For Carlota,

for whom there is no choice

but to fight…

Glory and honor blazoned on the quarters of the escutcheon, hidalgos, poets, priests, fabulous Americas, ladies-in-waiting,

galleys that apprehend the infidel, gibbets by the roadside, adventures, and swords flashing on every corner.

TOMÁS BORRÁS,

Castilla

PURITY OF BLOOD

CONTENTS

I. SEÑOR QUEVEDO’S DIFFICULT MOMENT

II. THE NECK AND THE NOOSE

III. MADRID STEEL

IV. THE ASSAULT

V. IN GOD’S NAME

VI. SAN GINÉS ALLEY

VII. MEN OF ONE BOOK

VIII. A NOCTURNAL VISIT

IX.AUTO - DA - FÉ

X. UNFINISHED BUSINESS

EPILOGUE

I. SEÑOR QUEVEDO’S DIFFICULT MOMENT

That day there were bullfights in the Plaza Mayor, but constable Martín Saldaña’s festive fire had been doused. A woman had been found in a sedan chair in front of the church of San Ginés, strangled. In her hand was a pouch containing fifty escudos and a handwritten, unsigned note bearing the words, For masses for your soul.

A pious old woman on her way to early church had found the body. She advised the sacristan, and he had informed the parish priest who, after a hurried absolution, sub conditione, made a report to the authorities. By the time the chief constable showed up to make his token appearance in the small plaza of San Ginés, local residents and curious bystanders were milling around the sedan chair. The chair and its contents had become the object of a local pilgrimage, and a number of Saldaña’s catchpoles were needed to hold back the crowd while the judge and the scribe drew up their documents and Martín Saldaña made his cursory examination of the corpse.

The chief constable set about his task in the most leisurely fashion, as if he had time to burn. Perhaps it was because of his history as a former soldier—he had served in Flanders before his wife (at least it was said it had been she) obtained his present position for him. In any case, Madrid’s chief constable went about his duties at a pace that a certain satiric poet—the gifted-in-wealth-as-well-as-talent Ruiz de Villaseca—had described in a poisonous décima as paso de buey, an ox’s pace. It was a clear allusion to the lethargy with which the chief constable picked up his staff of office, or attempted to parry the staffs his wife welcomed.