goption Brian's blog

Purity of Blood

I finished Purity of Blood by Arturo Perez-Reverte this morning.

Captain Alatriste and his young ward Íñigo are back with more intrigue from Madrid in the early 17th century. Honor-bound to help an old friend, the captain narrowly escapes a trap, but Inigo is caught up by the captain's enemies who are working with the Inquisition. The story is told by 13-year old Íñigo, who adds glimpses into his future and the captain's, including his crush Angélica, the daughter of Alatriste's sworn enemy:

Up Calle de Toledo came a very familiar black coach, one with no escutcheon on the door and a stern coachman driving the two mules. Slowly, as if in a dream, I set aside paper, pen, ink, and drying sand, and stood rooted as if the carriage were an apparition that any wrong movement on my part might dispel. As the coach pulled up to where I stood, I saw the little window, which was open, with the curtains unfastened. First I saw a perfect white hand, and then the blond curls and the sky-blue eyes that Diego Velázquez later painted: the girl who had led me to within a breath of the gallows. And as the carriage rolled past the Tavern of the Turk, Angélica de Alquézar looked straight at me, in a way—I swear by all that is holy—that sent a chill from the tip of my spine to my bewitched and furiously pounding heart. On an impulse, without considering what I was doing, I placed my hand on my chest, honestly and truly lamenting that I was not wearing the gold chain with the amulet that she had given me to ensure a sentence of death, and which, had the Holy Office not taken it from me, I swear by Christ’s blood I would have continued to wear around my neck with besotted pride.

Angélica understood the gesture. Her smile, that diabolic expression I so adored, lighted her lips. And then with a fingertip, she brushed them in something very like a kiss. And Calle de Toledo, and Madrid—the entire sphere—vibrated with a delicious harmony that made me feel jubilantly alive.

I stood watching, still as stone, long after the carriage disappeared up the street. Then, choosing a new quill, I smoothed the point against my doublet and finished putting down don Francisco’s sonnet.

Soul, in which a godhead was enclosed,

Veins, through which a humor’s fire arose,

Marrow, the seat of earthly passion’s reign,

Will fly the body, but quiddity retain;

Though ash, they will have sensibility,

Be dust enamored through eternity.