Purity of Blood by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

and preaching a fine homily from the pulpit. So the church was frequented not only by truly religious women but also by ladies of good breeding, drawn there by the Condesa de Olivares or by the chaplain, and by other women who had no breeding at all, but pretended to. Even harlots and flamboyant actresses—as pious in matters of dogma as the next—dropped in with the required devotion, thickly powdered and rouged beneath the folds of their mantillas and fine black silks, and dripping with laces from Lorraine and Provence—those from Flanders being reserved for ladies of greater substance. And since the presence of so many ladies, genteel or otherwise, drew more males than lice to a muleteer’s doublet, the famed eight-o’clock mass filled the small church from altar to atrium. Some female worshipers had eyes only for God, while others sent volleys of Cupid’s darts flying above their fans. Gallants lurked behind columns or beside the font to offer the ladies holy water; beggars sat on the steps outside the door, exhibiting their sores and pustules and the mutilations supposedly earned in Flanders, even Lepanto, and wrangling over the best places at the exit from the mass, ready to berate arrogantly, as their right, the caballeros and damas who gave themselves airs but would not allow a wretched copper coin to see the light of day.
    The three of us positioned ourselves near the door, at a spot from which we could survey both the nave of the church and the choir, and the iron lattice that divided the church from the convent. At that moment, the nave was so jammed with people that had there been only one or two more, the Christ on the main altar would have had to be portrayed hanged, arms at his side, rather than crucified. I watched the captain, hat in hand and cape over his arm, study the plan of the building, just as, when we reached the church, his alert eyes had registered every detail of the garden walls and the façade of the convent. The mass had progressed to the liturgy of the word, and when the celebrant turned to the assembly I was at last able to see the face of the renowned chaplain Coroado, who was reeling off Latin with eloquence, finesse, and aplomb. He seemed to be well favored, elegant beneath the chasuble, thick black hair tonsured and trimmed at the nape of his neck. His eyes were dark and penetrating, and it was not difficult to imagine their effect upon the daughters of Eve, especially in the case of nuns whose order closed off all contact with the world and the opposite sex.
    I was incapable of looking at the man without thinking of everything I knew about him, and about the convent in which he made a dressing gown of his cassock. I must apologize for mentioning the ill feeling and indignation caused by his ritualized performance, the fatuous unction with which he celebrated Christ’s sacrifice. I was astounded that no one among the assembly shouted out “sacrilege,” or “hypocrite,” and that I saw nothing around me but devotion, even admiration, in the eyes of many women. But that is the way of life, and that was but one of the first times, among no few to come, that I was taught a useful lesson about how appearances trump truth, and how villains hide their vices behind masks of piety, honor, and decency. And that to denounce evildoers without proof, attack them without weapons, trust blindly in reason or justice, is often the fastest road toward one’s own perdition, while the scoundrels who use influence or money as a shield remain untouched. Another lesson that I learned early on is that it is a grave error to align our fortunes with those of the powerful, for we are more certain to lose than to win. Better to wait, not rush or flounder about, until time or chance brings the adversary within range of our blade: something that in Spain—here, sooner or later, we all go up and come down the same stairway—is normal, even inevitable and expected. And if not, patience. After all, God has