The Barefoot Queen

by Ildefonso Falcones

  On that August 16, 1749, Ana Vega grabbed tightly the hand of a young child who had got lost in the confusion. As dusk fell, after the men had headed on barges to La Carraca, the soldiers appeared with almost thirty wagons at the doors of the stockade where the women and children under seven had been locked up for two weeks. Complying with the decrees that forced towns and cities around the kingdom to provide the army with wagons and pack mules for the transport of the troops and their supplies, porters and mule drivers from Seville had put at the army’s disposition several wagons. Eight of them were large four-wheeled caravans, some covered with tarpaulins and pulled by six mules; the rest were carts and two-wheeled wagons pulled by two or four mules. A crowd of curious onlookers gathered in the area. The military men tried to get the gypsies and their children to leave the stockade in an orderly fashion, but things got complicated quickly.

  One of them confronted the soldiers. “Where are you taking us?”

  “What are you going to do with us?” asked others.

  “And our men?”

  “My children are hungry!”

  The soldiers didn’t answer. People were gathered outside the stockade, a simple roof on pillars and open on the sides, and they insulted the women. Ana found herself getting squashed: the women were bunched up against each other.

  “You won’t get us out of here!”

  “Justice! We’ve committed no crime!”

  “And our men? What have you done with them?”

  “And our children?”

  Outside the shouting worsened. The soldiers consulted each other in glances, the corporals to the sergeants and the sergeants to the captain.

  “To the wagons!” shouted the captain. “Get them in the wagons!”

  The six-year-old boy gripped Ana’s thigh when the soldiers set upon the women with blows and the butts of their rifles. It was total chaos. Ana helped an old woman, who was on her knees on the ground, stand up.

  “Whose boy is this?” she shouted repeatedly.

  She watched as a group of soldiers pushed Rosario, María, Dolores and some others of Milagros’s friends out of the stockade; they tried to cover their young bodies as the shreds of clothes they had left after half a month locked up left them exposed: heaped up, without water, they had slept on top of a thousand layers of dried cattle excrement. A soldier grabbed Rosario by the shirt and violently pulled her out. Her shirt tore and was left in the soldier’s hand, who looked at it incredulously and then burst out in laughter while the crowd whistled and applauded the fleeting glimpse of the girl’s ample breasts.

  Ana, blind with rage, went to pounce on the soldier; she had forgotten about the runny-nosed kid gripping her thigh and only managed to drag him along the ground. The soldier noticed her and made an authoritative gesture for her to come out of the stockade. There were few women left inside. She obeyed. The wagons, set up in a long line and guarded by the army to keep people from rushing at them, were already full to bursting. The colorful clothes the gypsy women wore looked dull even under the bright August sun; all of them had been stripped of their jewelry and beads; even the belts on their dresses had disappeared. Cries, sobs, screams, complaints and pleas came from the women and their little children. Ana’s knees grew weak; what miserable future was in store for them?

  “Whose is this …?” she started to scream. But then she broke off and squeezed the little boy’s hand; it was a wasted effort.

  “Get into the wagon!” they shouted at her as they pushed her with a shotgun crossed against her back.

  Get into the wagon? She turned slowly and found a fresh-faced young man with a cockeyed white wig. She looked him carefully up and down.

  “Tobacco!” she shouted at him. “I sell tobacco at a good price!” she added, miming searching inside her skirt. “The best!”

  The boy stammered something and shook his head naively.

  “Tobacco!” Ana then howled toward the crowd, pretending to smoke a cigar.

  Behind her, the gypsy women in the wagon stopped sobbing.

  Then she smiled, as if the blood had started running through her veins again, when one of the women in the wagon joined her farce.

  “Fortunes! I read palms! Would you like me to read yours, lad?”

  From wagon to wagon, the gypsy women started to react.

  “Alms for the poor!”

  “Baskets! Would you like a basket, my lady?” one asked a huge matron who was watching the scene dumbstruck, as was the puny man who accompanied her. “You can carry your husband in it!”

  The crowd laughed.

  Little by little, the women and children transformed their crying into laughter. Ana winked at a young soldier.

  “We’ll have a smoke together some other day,” she said to him before turning and helping the little boy into the last of the wagons. Then, when the captain ordered the start of the march, she got on as well.

  Beside Ana, in the wagon, Basilia Monge offered the crowd imaginary sweet fritters. “Bring me the pan and the dough,” she shouted at the soldiers on horseback who brought up the rear. “I’ll get the fat to fry them in off your sergeant’s belly.”

  Ana Vega ignored the soldiers’ laughter and the sergeant’s indignation and she knelt down to the height of the boy she’d been dragging along with her. “What’s your name, little one?” she asked him as she tried to clean, with saliva-dampened fingers, the dirty streaks that ran down his face from the tears that she hadn’t even had the chance to acknowledge before then.

  THE CARAVAN of gypsy children and women took almost a week to reach Málaga. The battered coach road that went south allowed them to be insulted and spat on by the authorities and the inhabitants of El Arahal, Puebla de Cazalla, Osuna, Álora and Cártama before reaching the famous city on the banks of the Mediterranean. The King had ordered that the expenses of the gypsies’ food and transport be covered by the sale of their belongings, but there wasn’t time to auction them. The local Chief Magistrates and their deputies refused to provide, on the account of a King who wasn’t likely to pay them back, more than was strictly essential for keeping those women from dying in their jurisdictions and creating problems for them; so hunger started to take its toll on the gypsies, who had to look on helplessly as the soldiers stole their rations. They put aside the little that was left to feed their children.

  On the first night, Ana searched the line of wagons for Francisco’s mother—that was the boy’s name—whom she ran into making the same search but in the opposite direction and asking at each wagon for her little one. For a moment she forgot how desperate her situation was as she received her son with outstretched arms. Still hugging him, she looked at Ana. “Thank you …”

  “Ana,” she introduced herself. “Ana Vega.”

  “Manuela Sánchez,” said the other.

  “He’s a good boy,” commented Ana, mussing Francisco’s dirty hair. “And he sings very well.”

  Ana had kept him entertained with songs throughout the endless and uncomfortable wagon journey.

  “Yes, just like his father.”

  Manuela’s smile disappeared. Ana knew she was thinking about her man. And José? She again felt the uneasiness that had hounded her during the days of imprisonment in the shepherd’s stockade, surrounded by the constant complaints and laments of the gypsy women at being separated from their husbands. She … Well, tears didn’t spring to her eyes when she thought of José. What had become of her life? Where was the love she once believed she felt for her husband? Only Milagros united them. She pursed her lips. At least the girl was free. That was her only comfort; the rest didn’t matter much if the girl was still free. She straightened up. They had to fight! The King had taken her father from her when she was a child, and now another King was stealing her … her own freedom. She was unwilling to submit, to beg and plead and grovel before the payos and the priests and the friars as she had done with her mother when she was a girl. No! She wouldn’t do it. Time … or death would resolve the situation.
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br />   “Show us how you sing, Francisco,” Ana asked the boy then, to Manuela’s surprise. She began to clap her hands softly, her fingers extended and tense.

  “Sing, boy,” his mother added sweetly.

  The boy felt self-conscious and kept his eyes glued to the ground as his bare toes played with the sand, yet he began to hum the same songs they had used to fight off the tedium of the voyage. Ana clapped harder.

  “Come on, Francisco!” his mother encouraged him with a catch in her voice and tears in her eyes.

  The gypsy women began to come over, but no one dared to interrupt the little boy, not even to cheer him on. There were no guitars or castanets, they didn’t have even a measly tambourine; all that was heard was Ana’s clapping and the boy’s humming through his teeth. He hesitated as he looked up and met his mother’s face, flooded with tears.

  “Like your father, Son, sing like him,” she managed to request.

  And Francisco broke out in song, a cappella, with his high childlike timbre, lengthening the vowels until he had to stop to take a breath, just as his father used to do, just as when he used to sing with him. But there no one smiled, no one cheered, no one danced; the little boy found himself surrounded by downcast, weeping women who, in the faint light of the sunset, grabbed their children as if they were afraid they’d be taken from them. When one of those women fell to her knees with her hands covering her face, Francisco’s voice gradually faded until it broke completely and he launched himself into his mother’s arms.

  “Very good,” she rewarded him, squeezing him to her.

  Ana continued her handclapping.

  “Bravo,” cheered someone in a weary whisper from among the group of gypsy women.

  Almost no one moved. The little bit that Francisco had sung had transported them back to their homes, with their husbands, grandparents, parents, uncles, cousins and children; many had thought they could hear the laughter of their older sons who’d been taken with the men.

  Ana clapped harder.

  “Sing!” she urged. “Sing and dance for the soldiers of the King of Spain!”

  “Gypsy, are you trying to mock us?”

  The question surprised Ana, who turned and, in the light of the bonfires, saw the face of a soldier peeking above the wagon.

  “No …” she had started to respond when the soldier was hit hard, right in the forehead, by a rock.

  Ana turned her head again, and in the half-light, a bit further back, she was able to make out La Trianera, who mocked her with her cynical smile before throwing a second rock. She didn’t have time to react.

  “They’re attacking us!” one of the soldiers yelled.

  Ana herself had to get down on her knees to avoid the rain of rocks that came flying, amid insults and shouts.

  The soldiers sounded the alarm.

  Manuela, kneeling beside Ana, screamed like a woman possessed, and even little Francisco was throwing rocks … Ana sought out the protection of the wagon when the soldiers on horseback came through and pushed the women, scattering some, sending others to the ground and trampling them. Shots into the air intimidated most of the women. Barely a few minutes had passed; the cloud of smoke from the shotgun fire was still floating in the air when the riot was already controlled.

  Ana listened, with her heart clenched, to the moans of pain and the sobs, and she made out the shadows of children and women trying to get up from the ground and hobbling around looking for their family members. Just an isolated insult, which the soldiers were now laughing about, had brought on that punishment. She turned her head in search of La Trianera and saw her slip away with unusual agility. She was fleeing. Why …?

  The answer came from behind her back as a pair of strong arms gripped her.

  “This is the one who started it, my captain,” she heard a soldier say as he shook her before presenting her to the officer who had approached on the back of a horse that still snorted loudly, nervous from the charge. “I heard her mocking us and inciting the others to dance for the King. Then they threw rocks at us.”

  “No …”

  “Shut up, gypsy!” The captain’s order merged with a blow to the head from the soldier grabbing her, as he tried to nip her excuses in the bud. “Chain her up and take her to the first wagon.”

  “Bastard!” she muttered as she spat at the horse’s feet.

  The soldier hit her again. Ana turned and launched on him with her teeth bared. Others came to his aid, as he did what he could to get her off him. Between them they managed to immobilize her: they grabbed her by the arms and legs as she howled and insulted them between flying gobs of spit. It took four men to drag her to the first wagon and her clothes were ruined in the struggle, leaving her legs and breasts exposed.

  She made the rest of the trip to Málaga inside it, with bread and water, almost naked, with shackles on her wrists and ankles and a third chain joining them.

  Nicolasa lived on the outskirts of the town of Jabugo, just over eight leagues from Barrancos. After walking almost three hours during which they spoke little and exchanged many a lustful glance, Melchor nodded with satisfaction when she pointed to a lone hut on the top of a hill with a view of the surrounding hummocks: jumbled forests of oak and chestnut trees that came together with the scrubland of holm oaks. When Melchor saw the place, he thought it could offer him the privacy he sought while allowing him to keep an eye out for any sizable party of smugglers heading toward the Portuguese border.

  Along with two large dogs who rushed to greet Nicolasa, they climbed the hill to the hut. It was a small, circular stone construction, windowless, with a single low, narrow door, and a conical roof made of brushwood over a framework of logs. Inside you couldn’t take more than four steps in a straight line.

  “My husband was a pig herder …” Nicolasa started to say as she put down the grain she’d bought in Aracena on top of a stone bench beside the hearth.

  Melchor didn’t let her continue; he squeezed her hard from behind, wrapping his arms around her and reaching for her breasts. Nicolasa remained still and trembled at his touch; it had been a long time since she had had relations with a man—her husband’s blunderbuss, always at the ready, convinced those who might think to try anything—and she had long ago stopped touching herself on the lonely nights: her crotch was dry, her imagination destitute, her spirit frustrated. Had she made a mistake by inviting him? She didn’t have time to answer as the gypsy’s hands were already running all over her. How many years had it been since she had taken care of her body? she berated herself. Then she heard passionate whispers, erratic from Melchor’s accelerated breathing, and she was surprised to realize that the pace of her own breath matched that almost silent panting. Could it be true? He desired her! The gypsy wasn’t faking it. He had stopped at her thighs, curved over her, squeezing and caressing them, sliding his hands to her pubis and then down her legs again. And as her doubts began to dissolve, Nicolasa gave in to forgotten sensations. The “devil’s knob,” she smiled to herself as she rubbed her large buttocks against him. Finally, she turned and pushed him violently to the straw mattress on which she had squandered her nights in recent years.

  “Call the devil, gypsy!” she almost shouted out when Melchor fell onto the mattress.

  “What?”

  “You’re going to need his help.”

  NICOLASA WAS humming as she worked in the pigsty, a small enclosure to the rear of the hut. She had four good breeding pigs and some piglets that she fed farm-bought acorns, plus herbs, wild bulbs and fruits. Like many people in Jabugo and the surrounding areas, she lived off those animals, off their ham and cured pork, which she made in a ramshackle salting room, opening or closing its windows to the mountain air as dictated by her years of experience.

  As she worked, Melchor let the days slip by, sitting in a chair at the door to the hut, smoking and trying unsuccessfully to frighten off the two large woolly dogs that insisted on staying beside him, as if they wanted to thank him for the shift in mood he had brou
ght on in their owner. The gypsy glanced at them with a frown. It doesn’t work on these animals, he said to himself over and over, remembering the effects his furious looks had on people. He also growled at them, but the dogs wagged their tails. And when he was sure that Nicolasa couldn’t see him, he gave them a kick, softly so they wouldn’t yelp, but they just took it as a game. “Damn beasts,” he muttered then, remembering how Nicolasa had punched him the first time he really tried to kick them hard.

  “You won’t see a single wolf anywhere around,” the woman explained afterwards. “Those dogs protect me, me and my pigs. Be very careful about mistreating them.”

  Melchor hardened his features. He had never been hit by a woman. He made as if to return the blow, but Nicolasa spoke first.

  “I need them,” she added, sweetening her tone of voice, “as much as I need you and your knob.” The woman brought her hand to the gypsy’s crotch.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” he warned her.

  “What?” inquired the woman in a syrupy voice, searching in his drawers.

  “Hit me.”

  “Gypsy,” she said just as sweetly, noting how Melchor’s member began to respond to her caresses, “if you mistreat my animals again, I’ll kill you.” She gripped his testicles harder. “It’s simple: if you can’t live with them, continue on your way.”