The Barefoot Queen

by Ildefonso Falcones

  “No!” she corrected. “Not this one, that one.”

  “For crying out loud!” one of them shouted at her. “Make up your mind!”

  Caridad felt tears come to her eyes. She hesitated. Which was the last one she had chosen?

  “Morena!” Melchor shook her, but she couldn’t remember.

  “That one!” she pointed without being sure, her eyes flooded with tears.

  Some distance away, on a dune, while his men had taken care of the contraband that belonged to them, El Gordo and his two lieutenants watched with interest the huge commotion the gypsies had started. Caridad continued with her selection, crushing the tobacco leaves, barely knowing which bag they had come out of. The nephews set aside the ones she pointed to and the other smugglers made off with the rejected sacks. Melchor and Tomás hurried Caridad, and Bernardo argued with the agent who was wildly pointing to the other ships already leaving the beach, all eyes on the horizon, looking out for the lights of a coastguard vessel.

  Finally, the gypsies managed to gather their eight leather bags. The agent and Bernardo shook hands and the agent ran toward a boat that was already starting to row toward the faluchos. The ruckus continued over the tobacco Caridad had discarded. That was when El Gordo squinted his eyes. Each bag could weigh more than a hundred pounds and there were only six men: five gypsies and Bernardo. He looked toward where the other gypsy was waiting for them with the horses. They had to cover a good stretch of beach, each of them with a bag; they couldn’t carry any more. Then he turned to his lieutenants, who understood him without the need for a single word.

  “Wait here, morena,” ordered Melchor while he threw one of the bags onto his back with difficulty and joined the line headed by Tomás, each with his own bundle.

  Caridad was sobbing, terrified. Her body was drenched in sweat and the red of her dress showed through her open cape. Her legs trembled and she still clenched pieces of tobacco leaf in her hands. El Gordo watched as the line of gypsies set off, then he shifted his gaze to his lieutenants: one of them, with the help of two other smugglers, drove an unloaded horse on through the water, behind Caridad’s back; the other walked over to her.

  “Distract her,” El Gordo had ordered him. “You don’t have to hurt her,” he added at the man’s surprised expression.

  However, seeing how his henchman drew closer to Caridad, the lanterns gradually going out as the parties left the beach with their goods, he understood that if the woman realized the trick and put up a fight, his caution would have been in vain. When the smuggler was only a few steps away from Caridad, El Gordo again calculated the timing: the gypsies hadn’t yet reached their horses. He smiled. He was about to let out a laugh: they advanced slowly, as erect as they could walk beneath the bags, haughty and proud as if they were strolling down the main street of a town. The men who were driving the horse through the water had already disappeared into the darkness, so they must be very close to the bundles. They had little time, but he was already rubbing his thick hands together: he sensed it was going to be easy.

  “Negress!”

  Caridad jumped. The smuggler who had shouted did as well: her breasts, large and firm, struggled to burst through her red shirt with each labored exhalation of breath. The man forgot the speech he’d prepared, absorbed in the sight of her and his sudden desire for those voluptuous curves. Caridad lowered her gaze and her submissive attitude inflamed the man’s passions. Beneath the increasingly dim light, the woman shone from the sweat that ran down her body.

  “Come with me!” the smuggler proposed naively. “I’ll give you … I’ll give you whatever you want.”

  Caridad didn’t answer and, all of a sudden, the smuggler saw how his companion, who had already arrived, was waving wildly with open hands, incredulous at what he had just overheard. El Gordo shifted restlessly on the dune and turned toward the gypsies: they were already loading up the horses, but it was unlikely they could see Caridad from where they were. The one behind the woman waved his hand, wanting nothing to do with it, and picked up one of the leather bags. Caridad noticed and was about to turn around, but then the lieutenant reacted and pounced on her, immobilizing her with a hand on the nape of her neck and bringing the other to her inner thigh. For a moment he was surprised that she didn’t scream or defend herself. She only wanted to turn toward the tobacco. He didn’t let her and bit her lips. They both fell onto the sand.

  El Gordo made sure the other lieutenant and the men he had with him were quickly loading the leather bags onto the horse and disappearing into the darkness. The first shouts were heard from the gypsies. Only one of his men remained … Good-for-nothing! he thought. If the gypsies caught him, they would know that he was behind the theft, and he didn’t want that. He was relieved to see that the lieutenant reappeared in the night and grabbed the man by his hair, almost lifting him off the ground, and separated him from the woman. They escaped shortly before Melchor and his men got to Caridad. It was unlikely that they had recognized them.

  “You’re old, Galeote,” murmured El Gordo before turning his back to the sea and disappearing into the night as well, trying mockingly to imitate the gypsies’ gait.

  “Sing, morena!”

  It wasn’t Melchor asking her this time, but Bernardo, after three days of walking in the most stubborn of silences, with one horse’s pack saddle empty, reminding them at each stride what had happened on the beach at Manilva.

  Melchor hadn’t allowed the bags to be distributed evenly among the horses and he walked beside the horse without bags, downcast, as if that were part of his penance. Caridad obeyed, but her voice came out strangely: her lower lip was destroyed by the smuggler’s biting, her body bruised and her precious red clothes torn to shreds. Even so, she wanted to please the gypsy and her mournful singing further accentuated the dryness of the summer fields they had decided to cross to avoid the main roads. It also intensified the pain of her scabbed, parched lips, although they didn’t pain her as much as the torn shirt she protected with the dark cape. What were the bites of a smuggler compared to the lashings of an infuriated overseer? She had experienced that sharp, intense pain many times, it lingered long before finally abating, but her red clothes … Never in her twenty-five years had she had clothes like those! And they were hers, all hers … She remembered Milagros’s applause when she’d showed them to her and her mother; she also remembered the way the people of Triana looked at her, so differently than they had when she wore those grayish slave clothes, as if they revealed what she was. Dressed in red she had managed to feel a twinge of that freedom she was struggling so hard to recognize. Which was why, more than her injured lips, it hurt her to feel how one of her breasts fell free over the fabric and the torn shreds of the skirt brushed against her legs. Would she be able to fix it? She didn’t know how to sew, and neither did the gypsy women.

  She observed the row of gypsies with horses in front of her. Despite the sun, their brightly colored clothes didn’t shine either, as if exuding the anger and disappointment of those who wore them. She had to sing. Perhaps that was her punishment. She had expected it on the beach, when the smuggler released her body and she saw that the bags had vanished. She had let them down! She curled up on the sand, not daring to look the gypsies in the eye when they came back; that was when the lashing should have come … or the kicks and insults, like on the plantation, like always. But it wasn’t like that. She heard them shout and curse; she heard Melchor’s instructions, and the others running around the beach with the gypsy’s indignant panting over her.

  “The hoof prints come out of the sea and disappear into it again,” lamented one of the nephews.

  “We have no way of knowing which way they went,” panted another.

  “It was El Gordo!” accused Tomás. “I thought I saw him lagging behind … I told you the Negress would bring us—!”

  Caridad couldn’t see the authoritative gesture with which Melchor stopped his brother’s accusation, but: “Get up, morena,” she heard him or
der.

  Caridad got up with her eyes lowered; the light of the lanterns the gypsies carried focused on her.

  “Who was the man who threw himself onto you?”

  Caridad shook her head.

  “What did he look like?” Melchor inquired then.

  “White.”

  “White!” That was Bernardo. “What do you mean white? That’s all? Did he have a beard? What color was his hair? And his eyes? And—?”

  “Bernardo,” interrupted Melchor in a somewhat weary voice, “all you payos are the same.”

  And there it all ended, without punishment, without even any recrimination. The gypsies went back to where the horses were waiting for them and they set off, far behind the other parties; they wouldn’t meet up with them again as they each went their own way. No one said anything to Caridad: not “Follow us,” not “Come on,” not “Let’s go.” She joined them like a small dog that follows whoever feeds it. They spoke little along the way back to Triana. Melchor didn’t utter a single word after his last on the beach. Caridad walked with Melchor’s back as her focal point. That man had treated her well, respected her, given her the red clothes and defended her on several occasions, but why hadn’t he whipped her? She would have preferred that. Everything ended after a lashing: back to work until there was a new mistake, until a new fit of anger from the overseer or the master, but this way … She looked at the gypsy’s sky-blue silk jacket and the lyrics of her song stuck in her throat.

  THEY WAITED until night fell to approach Seville. The return had gone off without a hitch but, even at night, they couldn’t cross the pontoon bridge to Triana with three horses loaded down with contraband tobacco. When the sky filled with stars and they continued, Melchor spoke for the first time.

  “Let’s go to Santo Domingo de Portaceli.”

  The convent, of the same order as San Jacinto, was outside the city walls, in the district of San Bernardo, beside the Huerta del Rey and the Monte Rey; it was the least populated of the six in Seville since only sixteen Dominicans lived there. The place seemed tranquil.

  “The monastery, the Huerta del Rey, the Monte del Rey,” complained one of the young gypsies as he pulled on his horse, “everything belongs to priests or to the King.”

  “Not in this case,” Melchor corrected him. “The monastery belongs to the priests. The garden used to belong to the Moorish King of Niebla, although I guess that now it belongs to the King of Spain again. You can’t enter with weapons. There is a tile forbidding it on the door. As for the Monte del Rey, it’s not called that, it’s Monte Rey: not property of the King.”

  They walked a few paces more, all waiting for an explanation.

  “Why?” asked another of the nephews before long.

  “You explain it to him, Tomás,” urged Melchor.

  “We used to come here as kids,” Tomás began. “It’s called Monte Rey because it is the tallest of all the hills in Seville. Do you know what all those hills in Seville are made of?” No one answered. “Corpses! Thousands of corpses piled up and covered with dirt from the plague last century. The years passed, people lost their fear of contagion and their respect for the unburied dead, and they started rummaging around the hill looking for treasures. And there was plenty. During the epidemic people perished by the thousands, and not many dared to pick around on a stinking recently dead body, so some of the corpses were piled up with their jewelry and their money. We found some coins, remember, Melchor?” He nodded. “You can still see the hill now,” added Tomás, pointing toward something in the night. “But it’s quite a bit smaller.”

  Finally they arrived at the monastery. Melchor rang the bell at the large entrance gates; the tolling broke the stillness. He didn’t seem to care. He rang again, insistently, three times in a row. After a long wait, the gleam of a lantern behind the gates indicated that someone was headed toward them. The spyhole opened.

  “What brings you here at this time of the night?” asked the friar after examining the gypsies.

  “We are carrying Fray Joaquín’s goods,” answered Melchor.

  “Wait. I’ll go and look for the prior.”

  The friar was about to close the spyhole, but Melchor intervened.

  “Fray Genaro, don’t leave us here,” he requested, drawling his words. “You know me. This isn’t the first time. The bell could have alerted someone, and if we have to wait here while you consult the prior … Remember that the money is yours.”

  At the mere mention of the money, the locks moved.

  “Come in,” invited the friar. “Stay right here,” he warned while he lit up a narrow path beside the garden. He turned his back on them and ran to the monastery in search of the prior.

  “I don’t want to hear a word, understood?” muttered Melchor when the cleric was far enough away. “No nonsense about hills or gardens, and nobody contradict me.”

  Caridad didn’t even move; she remained standing behind the last horse, the one without a load. Except for asking her to sing, none of the gypsies had paid any attention to her during the way back; they seemed to be letting her stay with the group just for Melchor’s sake. She had her eyes on the horse’s hindquarters when Fray Genaro returned accompanied by half the members of the religious community. A tall man with thick white hair greeted Melchor with a simple nod; the others stayed a little behind.

  “Good evening, Fray Dámaso,” the gypsy replied, “I have Fray Joaquín’s order.”

  The prior ignored him and just moved among the horses considering the bags. He reached the last one. He looked at the horse. He walked around it to see its other side and looked brazenly at Caridad. Then he feigned surprise and, as if addressing a class of children, began to count the bags out loud, pointing to them each with a finger: one, two …

  “Fray Joaquín told me that there were eight on this trip, Galeote,” he protested when he finished his ludicrous count.

  “There were, yes,” answered Melchor from where he stood, at the head of the row of horses.

  “So?”

  That stupid Negro woman let them steal two of them, Caridad was afraid he would respond.

  However: “The Chief Magistrate of Cabezas kept the other ones,” she heard Melchor answer in a firm voice.

  The prior brought his hands together with his fingers extended, as if praying. He covered his mouth and rested his fingertips on the bridge of his nose. He remained that way for a few seconds, scrutinizing the gypsy in the light of the friar’s lanterns. Melchor wasn’t intimidated; he withstood the gambit.

  “Why didn’t he keep them all?” asked Friar Dámaso after a pause.

  “Because making off with all eight would have cost him the lives of some of his men,” replied the gypsy.

  “And he was satisfied with two?”

  “That was the value I placed on the lives of mine.”

  The prior let the seconds slip away; none of those present made the slightest movement.

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Why wouldn’t you, your reverence?”

  “Perhaps because you’re a gypsy?”

  Melchor frowned and clicked his tongue, as if he had never considered that possibility. “If you wish, your eminence, we can ask God. He knows everything.”

  The friar remained unruffled. “God has more important matters than confirming the lies of a gypsy.”

  “If God doesn’t want to intervene, the gypsy’s word stands …” This time it was Melchor who let the seconds slip away before continuing. “Which your reverence could confirm by going to the authorities to denounce the Chief Magistrate of Cabezas for stealing some of your tobacco. The King’s authorities don’t listen to gypsies.”

  Fray Dámaso snorted and ended up acquiescing. “Unload the merchandise,” the prior ordered the other friars.

  “One bag is mine,” warned the gypsy.

  “You lost two and you still think …?”

  “The risk of the business is yours,” interrupted Melchor in a hard voice. “I am just th
e bearer,” he added in a softer tone.

  The cleric weighed the situation: a group of friars against six armed gypsies (he mistakenly included Bernardo). There was little he could do against them. He didn’t believe a word of what El Galeote had told him, not a single word! He had warned Fray Joaquín on numerous occasions, but that young, stubborn preacher … The gypsy had taken those two missing sacks and now he planned on stealing another! Fray Dámaso turned red with rage. He shook his head repeatedly and counted the gypsies again: six … and a Negro woman covered in a dark cape with a floppy hat pulled down to her ears. On an August night in Seville! Why was that woman looking at him? She was staring insistently!

  “What is that Negro woman doing here?” he bellowed suddenly.

  Melchor wasn’t expecting that question. He stammered.

  “She sings well,” responded Tomás for his brother.

  “Yes,” confirmed Melchor.

  “Really well,” put in Bernardo.

  “We can lend her to you for the choir,” offered El Galeote.

  The four Vega nephews exchanged a smile above their horses’ withers; the rest of the friars watched the scene with a mix of fear and fascination.

  “Enough!” shouted the prior. “Do you realize that this will be your last trip subsidized by the Dominicans?” Melchor just showed the palms of his hands. “Unload!”

  The friars unloaded the five bags in a flash.

  “Get out!” shouted Fray Dámaso then, as he pointed to the gates.

  “You really don’t want us to leave you the Negress?” joked one of the Vega nephews as he passed with his horse beside the prior. “We don’t need her. She’s not ours.”

  “Boy!” Tomás scolded him, trying to repress a laugh.

  Once outside, Melchor avoided heading for Triana, instead turning toward the outskirts of Seville. The others followed him with the horses.

  “How do you plan on getting this tobacco through?” worried Tomás.