The Barefoot Queen

by Ildefonso Falcones

  Old María paused. The silence in the courtyard was absolute. One of the elders on the council tried to defend himself.

  “And what can we do, María? The law forbids walking the paths, wearing our clothes and living the way those ancestors you speak of did. You know full well that they consider us bad people simply for being born gypsy. Just three years ago we had to leave Triana by proclamation of Seville’s chief justice, who declared us bandits. Three years! Who of us here doesn’t remember that? We had to flee to the fields or take sanctuary. Do you remember?” A murmur of agreement arose from the men. “They threatened to kill anyone who had weapons and punish the rest with six years of galleys and two hundred lashes—”

  “Didn’t we all come back?” interrupted Old María. “What do we care about the laws of the payos? Since when have they affected us? We have always got around them. There are thousands who still live like gypsies! And you all know it, and you know them. If you in Triana want to submit to the King’s laws, go ahead, but there are many others who don’t and never will. That is exactly what I am telling you: you live like payos. Don’t blame the children for the consequences of your …” They all knew the next word the old woman would use, and they all feared hearing it. “… cowardice.”

  “Watch your tongue!” warned El Conde.

  “Who is going to forbid me to speak? You?”

  Their eyes locked in a challenge.

  “What is it that you propose for the girl?” asked another of the council elders, keen to break up yet another of the atavistic quarrels between the Vegas and the Garcías. “What are you getting at? Did you ask to speak just because you wanted to insult us?”

  “I will take the girl to the settlement of La Cartuja to make her into a gypsy who knows the secrets of nature. I am old and I need … you all need someone to take over for me when I’m gone.”

  “Choose another woman,” intervened El Conde.

  “I will choose whom I wish, Rafael García. My grandmother, a Vega, taught my mother, another Vega, and I, Vega and childless, want to transmit my knowledge to someone who has Vega blood. The girl will leave the San Miguel alley until the day you require her presence … and you will, I assure you. The council and the Vargas family will have to be satisfied with that. Otherwise, don’t any of you ever come looking for my help again.”

  “I FORBID you!” Ana yelled. Milagros, after seeing her Vega cousins arrive at the settlement with the horses, had asked them about her grandfather and Caridad and then decided to go and look for her friend, fearing for her safety. Having heard the story of the theft by El Gordo, as well as Melchor’s departure, Milagros was worried about Caridad.

  “Father will kill her if Grandfather isn’t there,” complained Milagros.

  “That doesn’t concern you,” answered her mother.

  The girl tightened her fist and blood rushed into her face. Mother and daughter challenged each other with their eyes.

  “It does concern me,” she muttered.

  “Haven’t we suffered enough because of that Negress?”

  “It wasn’t Cachita’s fault,” argued Milagros. “She didn’t do anything, she didn’t—”

  “It’s up to your father to decide that,” declared her mother.

  “No.”

  “Milagros.”

  “No.” The gleam in her gypsy eyes indicated that she wouldn’t let her arm be easily twisted.

  “Don’t argue with me.”

  “I’ll go to the alley …”

  That was when her mother forbade it with a shout that echoed through the settlement at La Cartuja, yet the girl kept insisting stubbornly.

  “I’m going, Mother.”

  “You will not,” ordered Ana.

  “I will …”

  She didn’t get to finish her sentence: her mother smacked her hard across the face. Milagros tried to hold back her sobs, but was unable to repress the trembling of her chin. Before she burst into tears, she ran toward Triana. Ana did nothing more to stop her. She was drained after the outburst; she had been under such stress since Alejandro’s death. With her arms hanging by her sides, her whole body feeling the pain of the slap she had inflicted on her daughter, she let her go.

  Caridad recognized Milagros from a distance, on the road that led to the settlement at La Cartuja, near where Melchor had found her that night the potter had kicked her out of his workshop. She was walking barefoot and dressed like a slave again, with her grayish burlap shirt and her straw hat. In her bundle she carried the rest of her few belongings, including her shredded red clothes.

  Milagros didn’t have any trouble recognizing her friend even with her eyes flooded with tears. She hesitated, expecting her to be dressed in her showy red clothes, but her doubt dissipated almost instantly: there was no woman in Triana, nor in the whole of Seville, as black as the one who advanced slowly toward her.

  The girl wiped away her tears with her forearm and then touched her cheek. It still burned from her mother’s slap.

  Milagros threw herself into Caridad’s arms. Caridad was waiting … hoping … she needed an explosion of joy and affection yet, amid the girl’s sobs and babbling, she sensed that Milagros was seeking help and understanding from her.

  On the road that led from Triana to the gypsy settlement at La Cartuja, Caridad let Milagros embrace her. The girl buried her head between Caridad’s breasts and broke out in inconsolable sobs, as if she had been holding back her feelings until then, without anyone she could pour out her pain and misfortune to.

  Caridad had managed to calm the girl down a bit and they were sitting by the side of the road, among the orange trees, glued to each other. She listened to Milagros’s faltering account of what had happened, beginning at the count and countess’s party.

  “Holy Mother of God,” murmured Caridad when the girl told her how she had asked Alejandro to avenge her.

  “He deserved to be punished!” exclaimed Milagros.

  “But …” she tried to counter.

  The gypsy girl didn’t let her continue. “Yes, Cachita, yes,” she insisted between moans. “He raped you, he prostituted you and nobody was willing to do anything about it.”

  “They killed him over me?” The splintered question came out of Caridad’s throat when Milagros told her about the boy’s death.

  “It’s not your fault, Cachita.”

  It wasn’t your fault: those had been the very words Melchor had said to her that same night as he bid her farewell. On the plantation, they put an end to mistakes with the whip, and then it was back to work. But now she was overcome by unfamiliar feelings: because of her, Melchor had gone out to seek vengeance; because of her, Milagros had also demanded vengeance. Vengeance! How vital it was to the gypsies!

  “But it was all because of me,” she said, interrupting Milagros’s account of what had happened in the council of elders.

  “And because of me, Cachita. Me, too. You are my friend. I had to do it! I couldn’t … I kept thinking about what that man had done to you. I felt your pain as if it were mine.”

  Her pain? The only pain she was suffering in that moment was the pain of Melchor having left, of him no longer being with her. The nights in the small courtyard’s cramped room, twisting tobacco and singing softly while he remained in silence behind her flashed into her mind’s eye. Milagros was still talking about Rafael García, about the elders and some healer. Should she interrupt her and tell her about it? Should she confess that her stomach was in knots at the mere thought of Melchor getting hurt in the confrontation with that smuggler? She lost the thread of the conversation, remembering El Gordo and his lieutenants sitting at the table in the Gaucín inn, all of them violent brutes, while Melchor.… He had gone alone! How could he …?

  “Are you OK?” asked Milagros, noticing how Caridad’s body trembled.

  “Yes … no. Alejandro is dead.”

  “He was a true gypsy in the end: brave and reckless. You should have seen him beating on the potter’s door … And he did it
for us!” Milagros let a few seconds pass. “Do you think he loved me?” she suddenly suggested.

  Caridad found herself surprised by the question. “Yes …” she stammered.

  “Sometimes I sense his presence.”

  “The dead are always with us,” Caridad then murmured as if reciting something she had learned by heart. “You must treat him well,” she continued, repeating what they said about the spirits in Cuba. “They are unpredictable and if angered they can be dangerous. If you want to distance him, you can light a bonfire in front of your house at night. Fire frightens them, but you shouldn’t burn him, just beg him to leave.”

  “At night?” asked the girl, surprised. Then she looked up at the sky, in search of the sun. “The night isn’t the problem, it’s noontime.”

  Caridad looked at her, puzzled. “Noontime?”

  “Yes. The dead appear right at noon, didn’t you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Noon,” explained Milagros. “When the shadows disappear and the sun leaps from the east to the west, time doesn’t exist and everything belongs to the dead: the roads, the trees …”

  Caridad felt a shiver and looked up at the sun.

  “Don’t worry!” Milagros tried to reassure her. “I think he loved me. He won’t do me any harm.”

  The girl stopped speaking when she saw how her friend kept looking up at the sun, calculating how long it would be before the shadows disappeared; her breathing had accelerated and her hand was at the lodestone she still wore around her neck.

  “Let’s go to the settlement,” she then decided.

  Caridad bounced up as if on a spring, terrified because in Spain ghosts also came out at noon.

  Not even a minute had passed when Milagros turned her head toward her friend, who had quickened her step. She didn’t know what she had been up to all that time; she hadn’t given her a chance to speak, to explain her adventure with Grandfather.

  “And why were you coming to the settlement?” she asked.

  “Your father kicked me out of the alley.”

  Milagros imagined the scene, lowered her eyelids and shook her head. And there was still the problem of her mother. What would she say when she showed up at the settlement? Ana went there frequently, much more than one would expect of a married woman; she even slept with Milagros and María some nights in the healer’s hut. After Alejandro’s death and the sentence that left the girl in the healer’s care, Ana’s relationship with her husband seemed to have taken a path with no return: for him, Melchor’s taking in that Negress on a whim had ruined his life forever. No. Her mother wouldn’t like seeing Caridad. She wouldn’t allow it. Milagros feared how she would react.

  “And your new clothes?” she inquired, trying to push away the anxiety that had suddenly overtaken her.

  Despite her wariness over the sun reaching the highest point in the sky, despite their haste, Caridad stopped in the road, rummaged around in her bundle and pulled out the torn shirt, which she held out toward the girl with her arms high.

  Surrounded by fertile gardens and orange trees, Milagros couldn’t see Caridad’s head or torso, hidden behind the shirt she dangled in front of her. What she could see were the rips in the blouse. An uncontrollable, tender shiver swept over her as she realized how the gesture revealed Cachita’s innocence.

  “What … what happened?” Milagros asked after clearing her throat a couple of times.

  But before she could answer, Milagros went on, “We’ll fix them, Cachita. I’m sure we can.” She had already heard about how El Gordo had managed to steal those two bags of tobacco from the Vegas and that Melchor had set out in search of vengeance.

  As they were about to resume their walk, Caridad carefully stuffed the blouse back into her bundle and came across the handkerchief that Melchor had given her to deliver to his granddaughter.

  “Wait. This is for you, from your grandfather.”

  Milagros looked at the large, colorful handkerchief with affection and squeezed it between her fingers. “Grandfather,” she whispered. “He’s the only one who loves me. And you, too, of course, I mean—I guess,” she added, flustered.

  But Caridad wasn’t listening. Did the gypsy love her as well?

  At the settlement, Caridad spent her time twisting tobacco and making cigars. Tomás put her up in the shack of an old married couple, both dour and surly, who lived alone and had a bit of extra space. He also got her all the tools needed for her work but, above all, he was the one who defended her against Ana’s aggression when she saw her arriving with Milagros.

  “Niece!” shouted Tomás, getting between the women and gripping Ana by the wrists to get her to stop hitting Caridad, who was curled up, trying to shield her head from the gypsy woman’s shouts and blows. “When Melchor comes back, he will decide what should be done with the morena. Meanwhile … meanwhile,” he repeated, shaking her to get her to listen to him, “she will be working with the tobacco; those were your father’s orders.”

  Ana, flushed with rage, managed to spit in Caridad’s face. “I refuse to sell a single cigar made by that Negress!” she declared, escaping Tomás’s hold. “So they’ll all rot, and you along with them!”

  “Mother!” exclaimed Milagros as she saw her flee toward Triana.

  The girl rushed after her.

  “Mother.” She tried to stop her. “Caridad did nothing,” insisted the girl, tugging on her clothes. “It’s not her fault.”

  Ana pushed her away and continued down the road.

  Milagros watched her go and then returned to where a fair number of gypsies had gathered. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Always marry a woman from a good family!” declared Uncle Tomás. “She’s just like her father: a Vega. She’ll get over it.” Milagros looked up at him. “Give it some time, girl. This issue with the Negress isn’t a question of gypsy honor: it will pass.”

  And while Caridad was shut away in the hut, choosing leaves and removing their stems and veins, moistening them and drying them just right, cutting them, twisting them and finishing off the cigar’s mouth with thread, Milagros learned the basics of the potions and remedies from the healer by following her around everywhere: to gather herbs in the fields or visit the ill. Old María didn’t allow the girl the slightest lapse in concentration or attitude, and she controlled her: her mere presence was enough to make Milagros submit to her will. Later, at night, she allowed her some time to relax, and Milagros would run in search of Caridad. Together they would leave the settlement and lose themselves in conversation or just smoke and look up at the starry sky.

  “Do you steal them from Grandfather?” the girl asked one night after taking a long puff, the two of them sitting side by side on the bank of the Guadalquivir, near a rundown fishing pier, listening to the murmur of the water.

  Caridad’s hand stopped in midair as she was about to take the cigar the girl was passing her. Steal?

  “Yes!” exclaimed Milagros at her friend’s hesitation. “You steal them! It’s OK, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I don’t … I don’t steal them!”

  “Well, how do you explain it then? If the tobacco isn’t yours …”

  “It’s my smoke. They belong to me.”

  “Go on, take it,” insisted the gypsy girl, pushing the cigar closer to her. Caridad obeyed. “What do you mean by your smoke?”

  “If I make them … I can smoke, right? Besides, these aren’t made of twisted tobacco, I just use the veins from the leaves and the remains, all chopped up and wrapped in a leaf. On the plantation that’s how it was. The master gave us our smoke.”

  “Cachita, this isn’t the plantation and you have no masters.”

  Caridad exhaled some long scrolls of bluish smoke before speaking. “So, I can’t smoke?”

  “Do whatever you want, but if you stop bringing your smoke, I won’t see you anymore.” Caridad was silent. “It’s a joke, morena!” The gypsy girl let out a laugh, hugged her friend and shook h
er. “How could I stop seeing you? I couldn’t!”

  “I co-co-could …” Caridad stammered.

  “What?” prompted the girl. “What? Spit it out, Cachita!”

  “I couldn’t either.” She managed to get the words out in a string.

  “For all the gods, saints, virgins and martyrs in all the heavens, it’s about time!”

  Milagros, with her arm still around Caridad’s back, pulled her closer. Caridad awkwardly allowed it.

  “It’s about time!” repeated the gypsy girl, giving her a loud kiss on the cheek. Then Milagros took Caridad’s arm and forced it over her shoulders while grabbing her around the waist. Caridad even forgot about the cigar she held between her fingers. Not wanting to break the spell, Milagros let the time pass, feeling how her friend returned the embrace, both of them with their gazes on the river. Nor did she want Caridad to notice the sobbing she was struggling to hold back.

  But Caridad surprised her with a question nonetheless, her voice projecting out onto the water. “Your mama?”

  “Yes,” answered Milagros.

  Ana hadn’t set foot in the gypsy settlement again; Milagros couldn’t go to the alley.

  “I’m sorry.” Caridad blamed herself, and squeezed her friend tighter when Milagros could no longer hold back her sobs.

  Caridad remembered shedding similar tears the day they separated her from her mother and her people as they forced her and hundreds of unfortunates like her to wait for a boat at the trading post; but when had she stopped crying—was it during the voyage …?

  She blocked the memories when she noticed that the cigar was burning her; she sucked on it again. In Cuba she had searched for her mother’s spirit in the parties, when she was mounted by one of the saints, but here, in Spain, she only tried to remember her face.