The Barefoot Queen

by Ildefonso Falcones

  The day came when Fermín had to go all the way to Madrid to exchange two sacks filled to bursting with reales de vellón and maravedís into a few marvelous gold doubloons. The sacristan didn’t approve of Caridad’s activities and he warned her.

  However: “I don’t know why but I’ve grown fond of you,” he admitted after scolding her and handing her the gold doubloons.

  “Because you are like that old woman I told you about when we first met: grumpy, but a good person.”

  “This good person won’t be able to do anything for you if you get arrested—”

  “Fermín,” she interrupted, stretching out the last vowel. “They could also arrest me for making cigars for Don Valerio, but you didn’t warn me about that.”

  The old sacristan lowered his eyelids.

  “I don’t like those two you’re working with,” he said after a little while. “I don’t trust them.”

  It was Caridad who was silent then for a few seconds. Soon she smiled and, though she didn’t know why, Melchor’s face came into her mind. What would the gypsy have answered?

  That spring night, as she watched the wind-up toy spin, Caridad remembered the reply she had given the sacristan.

  “They didn’t fail me today. Tomorrow … we’ll see.”

  “Call the patrol.”

  “What happened?”

  Many of the neighbors in the building milled around the friar. A couple of them carried oil lamps. “Are you hurt?” repeated a woman who kept touching him. Fray Joaquín was panting, flushed, trembling. He couldn’t see Milagros inside the apartment. Yes, she was there: she had slid down the wall and remained crouched down, naked. He managed to see through the faint light, the people crowding the landing. “Did that ruffian hurt you?” insisted the woman. “Look,” he then heard. He was filled with anguish when he saw how most of the people turned and focused their attention on the young woman. They shouldn’t see her naked! He shook off the impertinent woman who was feeling his arms and he managed to shove his way through the crowd.

  “What are you looking at?” he shouted before closing the door behind him.

  He could hear the sudden silence and looked at Milagros. He wanted to go over to her, but instead he remained by the door for a moment. The gypsy girl didn’t react, as if no one had come in.

  “Milagros,” he whispered.

  She continued to look off into the distance. Fray Joaquín went over and knelt down. He fought to keep his eyes from dropping to her breasts or …

  “Milagros,” he hastened to whisper again, “it’s Joaquín, Fray Joaquín.”

  She lifted an empty, blank face.

  “Holy Mother, what have they done to you?”

  He wanted to hug her. He didn’t dare. Someone knocked on the door. Fray Joaquín looked around the room. With one hand he picked up the gypsy’s torn shirt from the floor. Her skirt … They knocked harder.

  “Open up in the name of the law!”

  He couldn’t let them see her naked, although he didn’t dare to dress her, or touch her …

  “Open up!”

  The priest stood up and took off his habit, which he placed over the gypsy girl’s shoulders.

  “Stand up, I beg of you,” he whispered to her.

  He crouched and took her elbow. The door burst open at a constable’s violent shoulder slam just as Milagros was docilely obeying and getting to her feet. With trembling hands, ignoring the people who were entering the room, the friar buttoned the hook and eye on his habit over Milagros’s breasts and turned to find a pair of constables and the neighbors from the landing, who were watching the scene, perplexed and disconcerted, although the closed cassock fell plumb to the floor and kept them from seeing the woman’s body. Suddenly Fray Joaquín realized that they weren’t looking at her, but at him. Stripped of his habit, all he wore was an old shirt and some simple threadbare underwear.

  “What is this scandal?” inquired one of the constables after looking him up and down.

  The priest was embarrassed by the way they were staring at him.

  “The only scandal I can see”—he turned on them as if he could get the upper hand that way—“is that you have broken the door.”

  “Reverend,” replied the constable, “you are in your underwear with … with the Barefoot Girl,” he dragged out his words before continuing, “a married woman who is wearing your cassock and who seems …” He then pointed to Milagros’s legs, there where the habit opened slightly and revealed the shape of her thighs. “She is naked. Doesn’t that seem like enough of a scandal to you?”

  The murmurs of the neighbors accompanied his declaration. Fray Joaquín demanded calm with a motion of his hands, as if that could put a stop to the accusations of those observing him.

  “I can explain everything …”

  “That is exactly what I asked you to do in the first place.”

  “Very well,” he yielded. “But is it necessary that all of Madrid listen in?”

  “To your homes!” ordered the constable after a few moments of reflection. “It’s late and tomorrow is a work day. Out!” he ended up shouting to finally get them going.

  In the end he didn’t know how to explain it. Should he denounce Pedro García? He hadn’t injured her; no one would take it into account. The gypsy would come back.… On the other hand, if they believed the denunciation, what would then happen to Milagros? Sometimes witnesses were jailed until the trial, and Milagros.… she had already had enough problems with the law. What was he, a friar, doing there in the Barefoot Girl’s house? the constable asked him again with his eyes still on Milagros, who stood there in the cassock, indifferent to what was going on. Fray Joaquín kept thinking: he wanted to be with Milagros, help her, defend her …

  “Who attacked you on the landing?” the constable wanted to know. “They neighbors said …”

  “His Excellency the Marquis of Caja!” improvised the priest.

  “The marquis attacked you?”

  “No, no, no. I mean that the marquis will give you all the references you need about me; I hold the benefice at his private chapel … I am … I was his wife’s tutor, the marchioness, and I—”

  “And her?” The constable pointed to Milagros.

  “Do you know her story?” Fray Joaquín pursed his lips as he turned toward the gypsy. He didn’t see the constables, but he knew they had both nodded. “She needs help. I will take care of her.”

  “We have to inform the High Court about this incident, do you understand?”

  “First speak with his excellency. I beg you.”

  SHE WAS awoken by the bustle of Mayor Street; it was strange, different to Amor de Dios Street. The light that came in through the window hurt her eyes. Where was she? On a rickety old bed. A narrow, long room with … She tried to focus her vision: a statue of the Virgin presided over the room. She shifted on the bed. She moaned when she felt she was naked beneath the blanket. Had they forced themselves on her again? No, it couldn’t be. Her head wanted to burst, but gradually she began to remember Pedro running the knife-point over her body, her neck, and her husband’s murderous gaze. And then, what had happened then?

  “Are you awake at last?”

  The imperious voice of the old woman didn’t match her slow, pained movements. She approached with difficulty and dropped some clothes onto the bed; her own, Milagros saw.

  “It’s almost noon, get dressed,” she ordered.

  “Give me a bit of wine,” Milagros asked.

  “You can’t drink.”

  “Why?”

  “Get dressed,” the old woman repeated brusquely.

  Milagros felt unable to argue. The old woman walked wearily to the window and opened it wide. A stream of fresh air entered along with the noise of the merchants coming and going and the carriage traffic. Then she walked toward the door.

  “Where am I?”

  “In Fray Joaquín’s house,” the woman answered before leaving. “It seems he knows you.”

  Fray Jo
aquín! That was the missing link she needed to connect her memories: the fight, the screams, the friar kneeling beside her, the constables, the people. He had shown up and saved her life. It had been five years since they had last seen each other. “I told you he was a good person, María,” she mumbled. Flashes of happy times in Triana forced a smile to her face, but she soon remembered that when the friar burst into the house she had been naked. She saw him again kneeling before her when she was naked and drunk. The burning in her stomach rose up to her mouth. How much more did he know about her life?

  It calmed her to learn from Francisca that Fray Joaquín had gone out earlier. “To the house of the marquis, his protector,” the old woman added. Milagros wanted to see him, but at the same time she was afraid of doing so.

  “Why don’t you take advantage now?” the old woman interrupted her thoughts after bringing over a bowl of milk and a piece of hard bread; the gypsy was already dressed.

  “Take advantage … to do what?”

  “To leave, go back with your people. I’ll tell the friar that …”

  Milagros stopped listening to her; she felt incapable of explaining that she had no one and no place to go to. Pedro had tried to kill her in her own home, so she couldn’t go back there. Fray Joaquín had saved her and, even though she couldn’t find an explanation for his presence there, she was sure that he would help her.

  “I have to find my daughter.”

  With those stammering words, she received the friar priest. She was standing waiting for him, with her back to the window that overlooked the street of the silversmiths. She heard the door to the house open and Fray Joaquín whispering with Francisca. She looked at her clothes and carefully smoothed the skirt with one hand. She heard him walk through the hallway. She smoothed her rough, spiky hair too.

  He smiled from the door to the room. Neither of them moved.

  “What’s your daughter’s name?” he asked.

  Milagros closed her eyes tightly. Her throat was seized up. She was going to cry. She couldn’t. She didn’t want to.

  “María,” she managed to articulate.

  “Pretty name.” Fray Joaquín’s words were accompanied by a sincere, kind expression on his face. “We will find her.”

  The gypsy girl collapsed at the simple promise. How long had it been since anyone had shown her affection? Lust, greed; they all wanted her body, her songs, her dances, her money. How long had it been since they had offered her comfort? She sought support in the window frame. Fray Joaquín took a step toward her, but he stopped. Behind him appeared Francisca, who passed him without even a glance and approached Milagros.

  “What are you planning on doing with her, Father?” she asked in annoyance as she escorted the gypsy to the bed.

  Fray Joaquín stifled an impulse to help the old woman and watched how, with difficulty, she managed to lie Milagros down.

  “Are you OK?” he asked.

  “She’d be better out of this house,” replied Francisca.

  Milagros dozed for what was left of the day. Although her body needed it, she was tormented by dreams that didn’t let her sleep. Pedro, knife in hand. Her girl, María. Her body in the hands of noblemen, abused. The groundlings at the Príncipe booing her … However, when she opened her eyes and realized where she was, she calmed down and her senses grew drowsy until she fell asleep again. Francisca watched over her.

  “You can rest for a while if you’d like,” offered the friar to the old woman after a few hours.

  “And leave you alone with this woman?”

  FROM HER room, Milagros heard the voices of Fray Joaquín and Francisca, arguing.

  “Why?” he repeated for the third time.

  She hadn’t seen him once the entire morning. “He’s out,” was all Francisca answered before going to mass and leaving her alone. Milagros had heard them both return, but when she was about to go into the hallway, the voices had stopped her. She knew that she was the reason for the argument and she didn’t want to witness it.

  “Because she’s a gypsy!” the old washerwoman finally exploded at the priest’s insistence. “Because she is a married woman and because she’s a whore!”

  Milagros dug her nails into her hands and clenched her eyes shut.

  She had said it. If Fray Joaquín hadn’t heard about it before, he knew it now.

  “She is a sinner who needs our help,” she heard him answer.

  Fray Joaquín knows about it! thought Milagros. He hadn’t denied it, his words showed no surprise: a “sinner” was all he had said.

  “I’ve treated you well,” Fray Joaquín proffered. “This is how you thank me for it, abandoning me when I need you most.”

  “You don’t need me, Father.”

  “But she … Milagros … And you, where will you go?”

  “The priest at San Miguel promised me …” confessed the old woman after a few seconds of silence. “It is a sin to live under the same roof shared by a prostitute and a man of religion,” she offered as an excuse.

  The parish of San Miguel was where Francisca went to mass every day. The old woman begged him with a weary gesture to let her leave and Fray Joaquín stepped aside to let her pass.

  Don Ignacio, the Marquis of Caja, had not been exaggerating at all. Every door in Madrid will slam in your face, he had warned him when the friar insisted on continuing to live with Milagros. Luckily, the nobleman had taken care of the denunciation.

  “I can intercede before the ministers of His Majesty and the High Court,” he had told him, “but I can’t silence the rumors that the neighbors and the constables have spread …”

  “There is nothing sinful in my behavior,” he said in his defense.

  “I am not the one judging you. I think highly of you, but people’s imaginations are as vast as their ability to slander. Maliciousness will bar your access to all those people that up until now rewarded you with their friendship or simply with their company. No one will want to have any link to the Barefoot Girl.”

  How right he had been! But it wasn’t only the nobles. Not even Francisca, the washerwoman he had saved from certain death on the streets of Madrid, accepted the situation. You are ruining her life, Father, Don Ignacio warned him.

  The house fell silent when Fray Joaquín closed the door. He looked toward the room where Milagros was. Was he sure that there was nothing sinful in his behavior? He had just given up the marquis’s chaplaincy for that woman. He’d lost a chapel benefice over a gypsy woman … Suddenly, Francisca’s betrayal had turned the marquis’s warnings into a painful reality and he was overcome with doubts.

  Milagros heard the friar head toward the room that overlooked the San Miguel Plaza, on the extreme opposite side of the narrow dwelling. She thought she could sense the feelings overwhelming the friar priest in the slowness of his steps. Fray Joaquín knew about her life; she had spent the whole morning speculating about the sudden, unexpected appearance of the friar and she couldn’t explain it … She thought she heard a sigh. She left the room; her bare feet muffled the sound as she went down the hall. She found him seated, downcast, his hands intertwined across his chest. He sensed her presence and turned his head.

  “It’s not true,” professed Milagros. “I am no whore.”

  The priest smiled sadly and invited her to sit down.

  “I have never given myself willingly to any man that wasn’t my husband …” she began to explain.

  They didn’t even eat; their hunger disappeared as Milagros’s confessions spilled out. They drank water as they spoke. He observed her first sip with some suspicion; she was surprised to taste a drink that didn’t scratch her throat or dry out her mouth. “Cachita,” Fray Joaquín whispered nostalgically when she told him about her father’s death. “Don’t you cry,” scolded the gypsy, her voice choking as she told him about her first rape. The darkness surrounded them, seated facing each other. He tried to find, in that face marked by hardship, a trace of the sauciness of that girl who stuck out her tongue or winke
d at him in Triana; she explained herself, her gaunt fingers flying in front of her, allowing her to cry unafraid as she regurgitated her grief. When there was silence, Milagros didn’t lower her gaze; Fray Joaquín, perturbed by her presence and her beauty, ended up looking away.

  “And you?” She broke the silence, surprising him. “What brought you here?”

  Fray Joaquín told her, but he kept quiet how he’d tried to free himself of her memory by flagellating himself during the missions, in the darkness of the churches in remote Andalusian towns, or how little by little he ended up taking refuge in her smile, or how eagerly, when he reached Madrid, he went to the Coliseo del Príncipe to listen to her and see her perform. Why was he hiding his feelings? he admonished himself. He had dreamed of that moment for so long … And what if she rejected him again?

  “That’s my life up to now,” he declared, burying his doubts. “And yesterday I gave up my benefice at the marquis’s chapel,” he added as an epilogue.

  Milagros straightened her neck when she heard the news. She let a second pass, then two …

  “You gave it up … for me?” she asked after a little while.

  He half closed his eyes and allowed himself the trace of a smile. “For me,” he declared categorically.

  THEY BOTH agreed that Blas, the constable, was the person who’d come with Pedro when he tried to kill Milagros. Fray Joaquín told her about the old gypsy woman he’d seen leaving the building with a straw mattress and some bundles.

  “Bartola,” said Milagros.