by Carla Kelly
Who would not smile at that? He didn’t look like a man with bad intentions, so she made a bow of her own. “Thank you, señor. Did our mutual friend acquaint you with my troubles?”
Nito’s eyes grew sad. “Oye, such troubles! We will keep you safe in our caravan.” He gestured at shabby wagons with strange markings, horses that didn’t look strong enough to pull either one, and two dogs even skinnier. “Perhaps some might think that caravan is too grandiose a word for what you see before you,” he admitted. “I have discovered in life that if you do not trumpet your worth, no one else will.”
Nito and Florinda’s enterprise seemed to have fallen on hard times. Granted, January was not the month in which to look around and see greatness. Perhaps she should be charitable, especially since this caravan seemed to be her lot for now.
Pablo edged closer and whispered, “Dama, we are going to get lice here.”
“We probably are,” she agreed, following Nito’s gestures toward the fire. “Another small moment in God’s eyes?”
From the look of the empty pot, they had just missed a meal. As she went closer to warm her hands over glowing bits of charcoal, one of the younger men gave her a hard look and scuffed dirt on the fire. She stepped back, disappointed.
Nito watched her. “Señor, we are so hungry,” she said, pawning away the last of her dignity, if she even had any remaining. “Is there anything left?”
“Alas, no,” he said, again with that sorrowful look that was supposed to explain their predicament. Very well. There would be no food.
“What would you have us do for you?” she asked simply.
The old fellow gestured to Pablo. “You. What is your name?”
Pablo told him. Nito pointed beyond the wagons. “Do you see Fatima my love over there?”
Pablo squinted. “I see an old camel.”
Nito took Pablo by the arm. “Let me introduce you to Fatima. But not too close.”
The animal had been resting on the ground, looking like a mildewed carpet. As man and boy approached, she rose slowly, grunting and passing gas. Hanneke stared in fascination at a monkey on the camel’s back as it ran up and down, chittering and scolding.
“Pablo, your unhappy task is to walk beside Fatima and keep her moving,” Nito said. He handed Pablo a long stick. “Poke her if she tries to sit down, but don’t get too close! Can you do this?”
Pablo gulped and nodded. Hanneke took a step back when Fatima bared her yellow teeth at the world in general.
“Good! Remember this, Pablo: If I point to that wagon, run and jump in.”
Hanneke looked where he pointed to the wagon that dipped dramatically to one side. “What is inside that wagon?” she asked.
Nito took her hand and tugged her after him. “You are about to find out. This is where you will be, señora.” He put his fingers to his lips and kissed them. “You are the lucky one!”
Pardon my skepticism, she thought, as they walked to the crazy-tilting wagon. Nito climbed the steps like an agile lover, and not an old man of at least forty. “Florinda, my sweet! Look what we have here! A fortune teller, I think.”
A what? Hanneke asked herself in amazement as he tugged her inside. He parted the beaded curtain and she stared at the largest woman she had ever seen. Florinda, Nito’s sweetheart, seemed to go on forever, settled there in her corner of the wagon, spreading out like a greasy pudding. She was dressed in yards and yards of black wool, with silver bangles like barrel hoops marching up and down her arms.
“Florinda, my little love, let me introduce you to Señora Ana Gonzalez. Yussef wants us to watch out for her. Come closer, señora, and meet my bountiful bride.”
Hanneke edged closed, afraid that if she moved too fast, she would slide into that human mountain and disappear forever. She leaned backward in involuntary self-protection, then moved cautiously ahead.
Not only was love blind; it was also without a sense of smell. Wave after wave of foul odors rose from the mound of flesh before her.
Florinda smiled at her, until her eyes disappeared into rolls of fat. Hanneke held out her hand and watched it disappear into the warmth and softness that was Florinda, Nito’s gypsy queen, la gitana. Hanneke should have been repulsed, but she wasn’t.
Nito looked from one to the other, his eyes shining with pleasure, as if he had introduced a queen to an equal. “You will be friends,” he said. “We are leaving now.”
“As you think best, husband,” Florinda said. Her voice was deep and rich, as it resonated through her gigantic body.
Nito leaned close and kissed her. “My treasure, I will come to you later,” he said. He tweaked one of his wife’s massive breasts. “When this little one is long asleep.”
They giggled together. Nito leaped from the wagon, called to the driver, and they joined the caravan with a great creak of the wheels that alarmed Hanneke.
“Is he not a pearl?” Florinda said as she settled herself.
“Yes, a pearl,” Hanneke agreed, amazed at her traveling companion.
Florinda smiled to herself, sighed with happiness, then gave Hanneke her attention. “Yes, you will be a fortune teller. The last one ran away with one of her customers.” She giggled like a maiden behind her massive hands. “She convinced him he was handsome and virile.”
“He wasn’t?” Hanneke asked.
Florinda shrugged. “Skinny and small. He believed her because people like to believe a fortune teller.” Her gaze turned serious, business-like. “I need someone who can charm money out of priests and old women. You must be able to understand the sorrows and joys of young virgins. Someone who…”
The barely moving wagon ground to a halt. Hanneke held her breath, waiting for the axle to snap under the weight of Nito’s lovely bride. She pulled back a dirty curtain and saw Pablo running toward them. She opened the door and pulled him inside.
He grabbed her arm. “Nito says it is a strange man with a big, tattooed man beside him!”
“Amador,” Hanneke said. “He wasted no time.” She looked again, only pulling back the curtain a little as her heart began to race. “And Felipe. Florinda, save us.”
Chapter Forty-three
Florinda wasted not a moment. Her eyes bored into Hanneke’s. “Do you fear small places?”
The filthy shed by the pig sty had been bad, but she endured. “I have hidden in small places before.”
“Dama, it is Felipe!” Pablo exclaimed.
Hanneke put her finger to her lips. “Shh. We know. Be calm.”
“He will do bad things!”
“Silence,” Florinda hissed. She pointed to an impossibly small chest. “Empty my medicine chest. Hurry!”
Please, not that one, Hanneke thought in a panic. “It’s so small. I cannot possibly fit.”
“You can if you want to,” Nito’s delicate dainty said. “Would you rather Felipe won?”
Pablo had already pulled up the lid. Hanneke threw herself on her knees by the chest. She yanked out strange marked packets of earth, coils of hair and snake skins, and objects she could not name and didn’t want to. When it was empty, Florinda ordered Pablo to take a rock with odd markings on it and bash out a little hole near the bottom.
He worked faster as they heard the monkey on Fatima’s back shrieking, and the jingle of Spanish harness. Sweat sprang up on Hanneke’s forehead, even though the wagon was cold and she could see her breath.
“Climb in,” Florinda ordered, her rich voice hard with an edge that even Nito had probably never heard before. “You will fit if you take off your dress.”
Hanneke threw off her dress, which Pablo folded and handed to Florinda. Hanneke sat down in the chest and wedged herself sideways, her face close to the hole Pablo had hacked. She fought down her panic as Pablo tossed in the charms, the earth, the hair, magic bones, mystic vials of liquid, curious stuffed creature only visib
le in nightmares. Hanneke shut her eyes as gypsy treasures rained down on her.
Florinda spoke softly. “Pablo will close the trunk and lock it.”
The monkey screamed and the dogs barked. Even in the trunk, Hanneke heard a sword pulled from a scabbard. One dog stopped, the other whimpered.
As she fought down her panic, Hanneke heard the lock turn. “What of me, lady?” she heard Pablo say.
Hanneke felt the wagon heave as the woman must have shifted herself. “When I raise my skirts, crawl behind my legs.”
“But lady, what would a priest say?”
“He would envy you,” Florinda snapped, all shred of calm gone. “Do it!”
“Sí, señora.”
Florinda called out, “Nito, why have we stopped?”
Hanneke heard his reply. “My jewel, my pet, look here, we have welcomed Señor Palacios from Las Claves. Sir, will you stay for our evening meal, as poor as it is? Do you want your palm read?”
Hanneke heard no reply. All she could think of was the lock on the trunk. I can’t get out, reverberated in her brain. Her nearly naked body itched from the debris in the trunk, but she could not move to scratch.
“We will look around, old man,” she heard Felipe say. “If I find that woman and boy, after you have assured me they are not here, Amador will slit your throat.”
You could never do it, Hanneke thought, in spite of her own terror. El Cobarde, I promise you, someday someone will do worse to you.
Hanneke steeled herself when she heard boxes and barrels thrown from the other wagon. A woman swore then screamed in terror, after the sound of a slap. More boxes tumbled out. Hanneke gulped back her sobs. If someone threw out the magic chest, her neck would break.
She closed her eyes and waited, desperate to move, unable to budge. When the wagon creaked and shifted, she knew Felipe or Amador – maybe both – were inside.
The men rummaged through boxes and the smaller chest of charms, which made Felipe scream and leap back. He must have seen the shrunken head that Florinda claimed was good to ward off evil. Perhaps it was good; Felipe slammed the trunk shut.
Despite her terror, Hanneke could not deny that Florinda was equal to these men ransacking her belongings. The woman hummed to herself as they thrashed about, then passed wind. “A thousand pardons, señor,” she said serenely. “Some things cannot be helped.”
It had to happen. Felipe knelt by her trunk and jiggled the lock. “Open it, fat woman,” he demanded.
To her horror, Hanneke heard a great rattling of keys. Felipe snatched them from her. “Which key?” he demanded.
“I do not remember, señor. It has been so long since I have opened that trunk. Try that one. No, no, the one next to it.”
Hanneke heard a key crammed in the lock, then another and another. The keys hit the wagon floor and Felipe sat on the trunk. “That miserable Arab we stopped not far from here told us you were harboring a woman and a boy. Before he died, he insisted! Where are they? Answer me!”
Florinda broke wind again, impressively louder this time. Felipe swore and left the wagon. Hanneke felt the wagon shake and knew Florinda was laughing softly to herself. Hanneke clawed on the inside of the trunk.
“No, child,” Florinda said under her breath. “He is right outside.”
Hanneke struggled to move as panic took over. Bits of bone and fur slid down her neck, then something slithered past her ear and nestled against her cheek. She bit down hard on her wrist to keep from screaming. Her mouth filled with blood and she fainted.
When she opened her eyes, she was lying stretched out on a pile of rags as noisome and odorous as Florinda. She immediately drew herself into a ball, terrified because she couldn’t see anything. Was it possible to go blind from terror? Perhaps she was dead. She felt her face, then realized it was night.
“Dama?”
Thank God no one had found Pablo. How could they? He had wedged himself behind Florinda’s legs, where no man was brave enough to venture, unless it was Nito, her amorous husband.
She wanted to laugh, but she ordered herself not to, knowing that if she started to laugh, she would never stop.
“Child? They are gone.”
For how long? she asked herself.
Pablo helped her sit up, and she realized she was wearing her black dress again. Her shoes were on her feet. Only the greatest force of will kept her from leaping up and running away, if she had any place to run.
As she sat there, numb and stupefied at the same time, Pablo brought her a cup of soup. She warmed her hands on it, then sniffed, hoping not to smell anything that resembled the trunk and its belongings.
“One dog is dead,” Florinda commented. “Eat.”
Surely not, she thought, and held off the cup. She sniffed again, knowing how hungry she was. Poor dog.
She looked around in alarm when the wagon creaked, but it was only Nito. He squeezed himself beside his mountain of a wife. She saw no jocularity this time, and her heart went out to him. “Pablo and I can leave tomorrow,” Hanneke said quietly.
“Where would you go?” he asked. “Who do you know? Your Castilian is remarkably good, but your accent…” He shrugged. “I have made a promise to Yussef el Ghalib. I would fear to disappoint him.”
“Can you get me north to… Toledo? Antonio Baltierra mentioned a convent just south of the Rio Tajo.”
“Santa Catarina. Perhaps, but not now. If we turn north too soon, Señor Palacios will be on us.” He stirred. From the sudden stench that grew worse and the clatter of arm bangles, Hanneke knew Florinda must have put her arm around him. “Yes, yes, my love, we will manage. I sent one of my men to follow Felipe, just to make sure he wasn’t waiting close by.”
“And?”
“They are moving north, but slowly. There are six men.”
In the dark, she heard Nito slap his knees. “Here we are. Señora Gonzalez, you will have to help us get by for a while.” Hanneke heard a loud smacking kiss. “My lovely bride will teach you how to tell fortunes.”
“Señor, all that fortune that follows me is bad luck,” Hanneke said.
“That will change, once you know the secret.”
“But sir, suppose someone recognizes me?”
He tipped his head as he scrutinized her. “That will change, too.”
Chapter Forty-four
They woke to snow, which changed to icy rain, which meant no one traveled that day. The others woke; Hanneke had never slept. As soon as she closed her eyes, she was back in the trunk again, fighting down panic, trying to breathe.
She wanted to sleep. Staying awake at night meant she could not escape the hunger that drilled more deeply into her middle with each passing hour. Also, she could not ignore the sound of Nito and Florinda making improbable love. The wagon tipped alarmingly and she grew dizzy, then nauseous.
Then lonely. She thought of Santiago, who had admitted to her one time that there weren’t enough hours in the day for all the love he wanted to give her. He always promised that after the coming season of battle, there would be more time. Time ran out and the winnowing began.
She hoped Antonio Baltierra still lived, wondering if he would make extravagant promises to her that he could not keep, either, no matter how heartfelt his intentions. That was another life, another Hanneke. Now she must learn to tell fortunes, she who believed in nothing and no one, she who had no hope.
She must have slept. When she woke, the weak light of the winter sun would have shone through the wagon’s one window, if someone had ever cleaned it. She was alone in the wagon, alone in the sense that no one who could move about was in there with her. She doubted Florinda had left the wagon in years; she was nearly a fixture, not a person.
Ah, but that was unkind. Florinda indicated a bowl on the ledge by her and Hanneke picked it up, wisely knowing not to be hopeful, because she would only b
e disappointed. It was a watery soup flavored with spices and odd things that must have come out of the magic trunk, with some meat floating on top, and a few brindle hairs. She drank it, chewed, and would have given the earth for more.
Now for the lessons, she thought, dreading them, but Florinda had other ideas. She held out a large fabric pad. “Unlace your bodice. Slip off your dress. See if this will do.”
After a glance around, Hanneke did as Florinda commanded. Shivering in the cold, she followed the woman’s directions and draped the hump over her shoulder. She wiggled it into place and tied it across her stomach. She pulled on her dress again.
Florinda tucked and adjusted the hump, then sniffed and dabbed at dry eyes. “Qué lástima! How sad for one so young and lovely to be a cripple!” She winked at Hanneke. “Women great with child will touch your hump for luck,” she said, her tone businesslike. “You will bring them easy labor. When they touch your hump, you must say, ‘God bless you, mistress.’”
“’God bless you, mistress,’” Hanneke repeated.
Florinda appraised her a moment, then clapped her hands. “I know! Hand me my sewing kit.”
In a few minutes she crafted a patch for Hanneke’s eye. She tied it on. “That will do. You needn’t wear this all the time, but you should get used to the hump.” She clapped her hands again. “Now you will learn to tell fortunes.”
Hanneke didn’t learn, not when Florinda pulled out a dusty book with illustrated hands and lines, in some strange script. As the afternoon wore on, all the lines and their meanings blended into one tangled web. She wanted to learn, but she could not concentrate, not with her stomach aching continually.
She admitted defeat when Nito came into the wagon late in the afternoon to light the lamp and flirt with Florinda. “What have you learned, little one?” he asked, then tsk tsked. “Poor child to bear such an infirmity as a hunchback.”
She stared at her hands with their traitor lines. “I can’t, Nito,” she whispered. “People will lay down coins they cannot afford, and I will be exposed as a fraud.”
Nito was silent, much as Florinda had been. Shame covered Hanneke because she had failed these people who had already suffered indignities for her.
