Free The King's Gold by Arturo Pérez-Reverte Page B

situation that can be aptly summed up in these words:
I am both innocent and devious,
Naïve and promiscuous;
Rile me, yet my wrath is soothed
With a small reward, however lewd.
    The reward in question was, of course, a nice fat purse. The place was always packed with petty criminals—rogues who swore upon the soul of Escamilla; scoundrels and rascals from La Heria; dealers in lives and purveyors of stab wounds. It was a picturesque pot, spiced with ruined aristocrats, idle New World nabobs, bourgeois gentlemen with plenty of cash, clerics in disguise, gamblers, pimps, common informers, swindlers, and individuals of every kind, some who had noses so keen they could smell a stranger a harquebus shot away and who were often perfectly safe from a justice of which don Francisco de Quevedo himself wrote:
Sevillean justice can prove scarce,
For the length of sentence handed out
Depends on the size of your purse.
    Thus each night, under the protection of the authorities, El Compás was a constant flow of people, a secular feast, where only the finest wines were served, and those who went in as sober friends came out as wine-soaked sots. There they danced the lascivious zarabanda, guitar strings were plucked and so were clients, and everyone did as he pleased. The bawdy house was home to thirty sirens whose singing emptied men’s purses. Each of these sirens had her own room, and every Saturday morning—for the people of quality visited El Compás on Saturday night—a constable would visit to make sure that none of the girls was infected with the French disease and would not, therefore, give their clients cause to curse and swear, and leave them wondering why God didn’t give to the Turk and the Lutheran what He had given to them. They say the archbishop was in despair, for as one can read in a memoir of the time, “What one finds most in Seville are men and women living in sin, false witnesses, rogues, murderers, and opportunists. There are more than three hundred gaming dens and three thousand prostitutes.”
    But to return to our story—which does not involve a very long journey—the fact is that, as ill luck would have it, just as Guadalmedina was about to bid farewell to us underneath the archway of El Golpe, almost at the entrance to the bawdy house, a patrol of catchpoles led by a constable with his staff of office passed by. You will recall that the incident of the hanged soldier days before had caused hostilities to break out between the law and the soldiers from the galleys, and both parties were looking for ways to have their revenge, which is why, during the day, there wasn’t a law officer to be seen on the streets and why, at night, the soldiers took care to stay outside the city, in Triana.
    “Well, well, well,” said the constable when he saw us.
    Guadalmedina, Quevedo, the captain, and I exchanged bewildered glances. It was equally ill luck that, of all the riffraff coming and going in the shadow of the bawdy house, that particular brooch and all his pins should have alighted on us as a pin cushion in which to stick themselves.
    “Out taking the cool, are we, gentlemen?” added the constable scornfully.
    His scornful bravado was backed up by his four men, who were armed with swords, shields, and black looks that the dim light made blacker still. Then I understood. By the light of the lantern of the Virgin of Atocha, the clothes worn by Captain Alatriste and Guadalmedina, and even by me, made us look like soldiers. Guadalmedina’s buff coat was forbidden in time of peace—ironically enough, he had probably worn it that night in his role as the king’s escort—and Captain Alatriste, of course, was the very image of the military man. Quevedo, as quick-thinking as ever, saw the problem coming and tried to put things right.
    “Forgive me, sir,” he said very courteously to the constable, “but I can assure you that we are all honorable men.”
    A few curious onlookers gathered around to see what