Chapter 9 Summary

Chapter 9 - Auto-da-fe: Roughly twenty heretics are due to be sentenced in the auto-da-fe, and they are moved to Madrid the night before and placed in holding cells close to the Santo Domingo plaza, where the spectacle will take place. In the morning, as thousands pack into the surrounding streets, Alatriste makes his way to the de la Carne section of the plaza. The king and queen arrive, along with the rest of the royal court, and take their places in balconies overlooking the plaza.

The prisoners are brought in a procession, organized into groups by their heresy, blasphemers, bigamists, sodomites, Judaizers, followers of Mohammed, and finally those accused of witchcraft. The procession includes effigies of condemned who died in prison or who escaped, and which will be burned in their place. All of them are dressed in white robes, most of which...