by Carla Kelly
Before the silence became too great, Nito sat beside her and took her hand, which he rested on his knee, palm up. His fingers were feather-soft as he traced the lines. “I see a long lifeline, little one, as well as much love and many children.” He traced another line. “The line of Mars is long, too.” He smiled at her so kindly that she wanted to weep. “I did not think we could turn you into a gypsy overnight.”
She pulled her hand away. “Perhaps I could do whatever that woman in the other wagon does, and she could tell fortunes.”
He shook his head at that. “Never! Yussef el Ghalib would slit my throat. She dances when the mood is on her, and spreads her legs for men.” He shrugged. “Her husband isn’t too happy about that, but even he has to eat.”
“I…I couldn’t.”
“No, you couldn’t,” he said, and took her hand again. “Let us try this: pretend you are a young girl with no dowry and no hope.”
“I had a dowry and it brought me no hope,” she said.
“So Yussef told me,” he said. “No hope?”
“None.”
“Not even a little?”
She thought about that. What did she hope for? Nothing. What did she want? Even less. Still, Nito expected some sort of answer. She hoped Antonio would not die because of her. She wanted warm weather. “Nothing grand.” She sighed. “I can pretend.”
“That is enough.” He looked at her hand a long time, studying it, then passing his other hand over her palm in a circular motion.
She knew it was foolishness, but she watched and waited. His fingers stopped and he pointed to one of the lines.
“There it is,” he said, his voice low, meant only for the two of them. “The line of Venus is long. You will be lucky in love. Remember, Ana, you are a poor girl who has not lost all hope.”
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, as she understood what he was doing. I have not lost all hope yet, she thought, as she felt a tiny spark inside her. A more skeptical Hanneke might argue that the spark was the twinge of her stomach contracting, but was it? She cleared her throat.
“How can this be, sir? I am a poor girl with no dowry. I am fit only to be a servant.”
Nito continued, his voice dreamy. “This line tells me that you will soon meet a man of large fortune. He will be so captivated by your beauty that he will carry you away to a lifetime of riches. I see a different dress for Sundays, and food when you are hungry, and new shoes.” He pressed his hand down on her palm. “Do you understand, Ana?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “When you have only one dress, two dresses is heaven. Bread and olive oil when you are hungry sound like a banquet.”
“Exactly! When soldiers come for their fortunes, you will tell them of Almohades they will kill, and land that will be theirs to the south, once they are victorious.”
“And orange groves,” she murmured, thinking of Antonio and his gift of oranges when she needed them most.
He kissed her cheek. “Yes. The fortune is not lines in the hand, but whether you can look inside someone and see the longing there.” His eyes softened. “Do you think it is all a hoax, Ana? Tell me truly.”
She hesitated, then nodded. He took her hand again, and retraced the lines. “The part about much love and many children?” He gently curled her hand, as if to keep the future inside. “I really do see that in your hand, Ana.”
Her test came three days later, when they were all at the point of starvation, but moving again because sleet yielded to mud and then sunshine. Everyone except Florinda was forced to walk, pushing and tugging at the wagons mired in mud. Pablo had become adept at urging Fatima along, staying just out of reach of those yellow teeth. By now, the monkey curled around her true knight’s shoulders and picked at his lice.
As she struggled through the mud, Hanneke practiced her fortunes, scrutinizing other travelers on the muddy road that seemed to lead slightly north, but more east. That woman there – did she need to know she was loved? That man dressed for a pilgrimage – does he yearn to know that God loves him? “What do I say?” she whispered as she walked. “What can I promise?”
They arrived in the village of Santa Luisa, a bedraggled town that looked as though it had been picked over by Moors and Christians for centuries. Nito seemed to see a different place, one where there might be money.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
He shrugged. “We will camp at the edge of town, here, in fact. Some will come to see the monkey, some to listen to me play. Some might watch Magdalena dance. Some will lay down a coin to hear their fortunes. It won’t be much, but we never need much, do we?”
The dog meat was gone. Supper was hot water with chicken bones tossed in, then removed when the tiniest skim formed on the water. The woman from the other tent threw down her bowl in disgust.
“How will I have the strength to dance?” she groused.
“You seem to have the strength to lie on your back and moan for strange men,” came Florinda’s deep voice through the curtains of her wagon.
The woman swore and darted toward the wagon as Pablo huddled closer to Hanneke. Her husband grabbed her by the hair and shook her like a dog. “Bide your time, Magdalena,” he warned.
Hanneke looked away. Nito cleared his throat more loudly than he needed to and reached for his guitar. He seated himself on the wagon tongue, made himself comfortable, and began to play.
Magdalena stood up, turning her back to Nito and the cascades of sound that rippled from his guitar. She began to move her feet slowly back and forth, almost as if against her will. She swayed to the music and then stopped. She spat on the ground and walked to her wagon.
The sound followed her. After a moment, she returned to the campfire and looked at Nito for a long, hard moment. “Damn you,” she said, then raised her arms and danced.
From her seat in the shadow of Florinda’s wagon, Hanneke watched as the villagers of Santa Luisa came close, women with small children who stared at the dancer, their eyes wide. When Magdalena’s husband whistled and the monkey ran into the circle, the little ones gasped with delight.
Hanneke watched the mothers. It has been a long winter for all of us, she thought. Hard for them, hard for me. How often did Santa Luisa see a monkey or a dancer? And there was nasty old Fatima, a vile beast, but exotic.
Nito finished and Magdalena posed with her head gracefully lowered, as if she danced for the Caliph of Al-Andalus. Small coins dropped in the dirt around her, but she did not stoop to retrieve them. The monkey scurried from coin to coin, putting each piece in its mouth, then depositing them at Nito’s feet, to more applause.
“What news?” asked a man in the shadows.
Nito rested his guitar across his lap. “News? I bring you news of battles to the south. The Almohades have been beaten back.” He gave Hanneke a sidelong glance, as if to say, I can stretch the truth. “There is plague in parts of Cádiz, caused, according to the holy fathers, by Christians who do not tithe. The Blessed Virgin appeared to a child in an olive grove near San Lucar.” He leaned closer to his rapt audience and lowered his voice. “The Jews of Algeciras have been carrying off small children for use in sacrificial rituals.”
The mothers of Santa Luisa gathered their niños close and looked about them in defiance of the Jews of Algeciras, wherever that was. Nito strummed a single chord and gestured toward Hanneke. “I will play for you gladly, but behold La Joroba Morena, the dark hunchback. She will tell your fortune.”
Her heart thumping, Hanneke walked with that rolling gait Florinda had made her practice to the tent between the wagons that Pablo had erected. She sat inside and waited.
The first to enter was a woman with a small boy. She coaxed her son forward until he sat on the stool in front of La Joroba. “I have only a small copper, but please, tell my son’s fortune. His father is away with an army, preparing to fight the Almohades.”
Hanneke took the boy’s hand in here, praying that she would not tremble, even as she wondered if the boy’s father waited to join Antonio Baltierra. Perhaps he had died in the snow before Las Claves. She stared intently at the grubby palm and passed her hand over and under it. She looked at the child’s thin cloak, the shoes shabby but neatly mended, the patched tunic. His fingers were red and swollen with chilblains.
She touched his cheek and he smiled at her. The peace and dignity on his young face humbled her, reminding her again, if she needed reminding, of the endurance of these people she had been thrust among.
“I see war,” she began, “war in this season to come. It will be followed by peace.” She found the longest line in his palm and traced it to his wrist. “You will live long in the land to the south, where it is warm even in winter. The birds never fly away. Your fingers will not itch and burn, because the winds blow warm.”
“I dream of such a place,” his mother said.
“It is there for you and your son,” Hanneke assured her. “There is someone else…”
“José,” the woman breathed more than said. “Please, by the saints.”
“Ah, yes, José. Surely it is he. I can say no more.”
The women wiped her tears and reached for the purse at her waist. Hanneke put out her hand. “No, no. My first look into the future each evening is always free.” She saw resistance on the honest woman’s face. “It must be so. This is how I plead with the saints to bless me.”
“Then I will not argue,” the mother said. “Go with God, Joroba Morena.”
“May you find orange groves,” Hanneke whispered, as they left her tent.
A young girl followed, then an old woman with the side of her face swollen, and another woman and child. Hanneke told their fortunes and took their coins, pleading with God not to smite her on the spot as she lied, play acted, and lied once more.
She thought about the matter as the customers dwindled then stopped. Everyone left her tent happier than they came in. Was that so wrong? Spain was a land of hardship. What was the harm in smoothing away a sorrow or opening a window on hope?
She had one last client, a soldier, from the looks of him. She squinted closer in the gloom, then sat back, trying to distance herself. She had seen the man before. Was he one of Santiago’s last gathering of soldiers before the battle in the snow with El Ghalib? Was he one of the young men who had clung to her hand and told her he was afraid?
She motioned for him to sit. He studied her, and she was grateful for the eye patch and hump. She saw the question on his face.
“Your fortune, señor?” she managed to ask.
“I know you from somewhere.”
“Me? A poor hunchback?” She was breathing too fast. She willed herself into calm and took his hand. She passed her hand over his, praying she wouldn’t tremble, and promised victory in battle and land to the south.
He said nothing. She released his hand and she sat back. He rose without speaking, put down not a single coin, and left the tent in silence. When she thought he was gone, he opened the tent flap. “I will remember where I know you,” he said.
She remained still, barely breathing, until she heard someone mount a horse and ride away. When she stood up, she felt older than Nito and Florinda combined. Should she say something to Nito? What would she say? Better to say nothing than to worry him needlessly.
She left the tent and watched the monkey gather the last of the coins. Magdalena had finished dancing. She stood at her wagon, arguing with her husband, who turned away finally, his hands clenched. Nito played on, his eyes closed, playing for himself now, because the villagers had retired.
She sat beside him. When he opened his eyes, she placed the coins between them. “It isn’t much,” she said. “I did my best, though.”
“It will buy us food, Joroba Morena,” he said. “What did you promise?”
“Hope, just as you said,” she told him, her heart full for the first time in a long time, maybe even since Santiago died in her arms.
For all that he was stupidly silly about his giant mound of a wife, Nito was a wise man. “For them or for you?” he asked.
“Both.”
He already knew her too well. “Something is troubling you.”
“No, no.” she lied. “I am tired, is all.”
He nodded, then helped her to her feet. “Tell me when you feel like it.”
Never, she thought. Never.
Chapter Forty-five
Everything changed at Rincón.
After Santa Luisa, there was another little village and another, all of them shabby, with people fearful until they saw the monkey and heard Nito’s beautiful playing.
“I haven’t the heart to argue about the few coins they toss our way,” Nito said one night after everyone had crept away in silence to their homes. “No one has much, do they?”
“So they say,” Magdalena snapped. “It’s hidden somewhere, I know it.”
Nito ignored her. “Ana, what are your thoughts?” he asked. “You don’t say much.”
There isn’t much to say, she told herself. Lately, thought takes more effort than I possess. “I suppose I am grateful to be alive.”
That wasn’t good enough for Magdalena. “Even though you put us all in danger? Tell me why we must be burdened with you?”
“Because Nito is kind and El Ghalib insisted,” Hanneke said, tired of the dancer’s endless sniping. “Pablo and I can leave now, if we must.”
“Not now,” Nito said, after a lengthy, measuring look at Magdalena. “He wants me to get you closer to Toledo and…”
“Closer? Closer?” Magdalena spit out the words. “We are going farther away!”
“Caution,” was all Nito said, then, “Do something with your wife!” to Magdalena’s husband. “Listen, all of you: I do not wish to provoke a quarrel with El Ghalib, or Felipe Palacios of Las Claves. We tread a fine line. Don’t forget that, Magdalena.”
Hanneke spent more time walking and less time in the wagon, with its fearful stench. They moved slowly enough. From Fatima, to the horses, to the entertainers, exertion became more difficult as they grew more hungry in a land with little to spare. She found herself thinking about herring, and the chewy black bread that the Aardemas had abandoned when Papa became wealthy enough for white bread. Hanneke longed for black bread smeared with honey. She woke up one night licking her fingers, almost tasting honey.
They traveled in company with others, taking no chances. They tried to blend in with the merchants and ordinary folk on foot, journeying though a bleak January and into February.
Blending in with a camel and a monkey was not an easy matter. Hanneke found herself looking over her shoulder, wondering when Felipe and Amador would ride up unheralded, see her and snatch her away. She thought she saw Amador once, riding beside her as she walked, then spurring his horse and galloping ahead, only to look back and leer at her. Impossible.
Another time she was certain she saw Antonio, bending over in his saddle, tracking her as he had looked for her after Jawhara and the funeral pyre. I am losing my mind, she thought. No. I am just hungry. She knew that her strength was leaving her faster each day she traveled and starved. Her monthly flow that had returned after Fermina’s death had dried up again. Her breasts were turning into empty sacks. Her hair lost its shine. She idly twisted a few strands around her finger one night and they fell off in her hand.
It wasn’t just her. Pablo moved more slowly. When she asked him questions, he answered slowly, as though his brain starved, too. Even during the difficult days of their journey from Santander to Las Claves, Santiago had remarked on Pablo’s good cheer. Now Pablo walked with his head down, as if needing to look at his feet to make certain they were moving, or if they were even his.
This couldn’t continue. Tonight she would ask Nito to point her north to
ward the Rio Tajo. That is, she would, if she could remember.
That afternoon, they came to Rincón.
It was a town like the others, with a row of spectral windmills and stone buildings that seemed to lean away from the wind. If anything, Rincón looked more prosperous than most, with sturdy walls and groves of bare trees. Perhaps there would be food in this town, and people with money. Hanneke glanced at Magdalena in her wagon, plaiting her hair and arranging it carefully, her eyes on Rincón, too.
Something about Rincón made the hairs on Hanneke’s arms stand up. In another moment, she would have shrugged off her feelings, but Pablo came to her side, his expression uncertain, as if he wondered whether his words would make any sense.
“Dama, perhaps it is time you and I left this caravan,” he said, keeping his voice low. “We could strike off toward Toledo, if someone could tell us where it is.”
“Pablo, what is the matter with Rincón?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Do you feel it?”
She did, but how could she explain? “We will follow Nito.” She touched his arm. “I, too, have been thinking about leaving. We can talk tonight.”
What was this? As they approached the village, she saw people hurrying up a rocky path that seemed to slope down to a chasm. The men were in an odd festive mood, nudging each other, some making throwing motions. Another one staggered and fell, as if struck by something, which made everyone howl with laughter. Women and children came, too, so Hanneke reasoned there was no foul intent.
“Where have they been?” she asked Nito.
Nito called to a priest hurrying along. “Father, we are strangers. May I ask, is something happening of a festive nature? We are entertainers and…”
The priest stopped. “This is Rincón.” He spoke impatiently, as if to say, Why do you need more explanation?
“You have me there, father,” Nito said, with apology and deference. “What happened?”
