The Barefoot Queen

by Ildefonso Falcones

  Martín felt a shiver. Melchor nodded once he’d finished speaking. Then he turned and shouted for his wine.

  “And tobacco!” he demanded. “Do you have any good tobacco?”

  The man, behind the box he used as a counter, shook his head as he rummaged around. “All I have is this.” He showed him a few paper cigarettes in the palm of his hand.

  Melchor let out a laugh. “I asked you for tobacco—what’s that?”

  The other gave an indifferent shrug. “Cigarettes,” he answered.

  “Now they sell them already rolled?”

  “Yes. Most people don’t have the money to buy a piece of Brazil cord and scrape it every time they want to roll a cigarette. This way, they buy only what they want to smoke.”

  “But then they can’t check the quality of the tobacco they’re smoking,” Melchor pointed out.

  “Yes, that’s true,” agreed the man. “But they are good quality. They say they’re made by a Cuban Negress who knows about tobacco.”

  A shiver ran through the gypsy.

  “The Negress’s cigarettes, they call them.”

  The music stopped in Melchor’s ears and the people seemed to vanish. He could sense … He picked up one of the cigarettes very delicately and smelled it.

  “Morena,” he whispered.

  In the year 1754 the briefs and requests to the authorities for pardons on behalf of detained gypsies multiplied. The pleas had never stopped coming. In the towns they continued to process the secret files, despite the fact that the Marquis of Ensenada had ordered years back that they were no longer relevant, and the town councils claimed the gypsies as residents in their districts, most of them smiths by trade, a job the old Christians didn’t do because they considered it beneath them.

  More than four years had passed since the big roundup, and that was the jail sentence that vagabonds were given. Since they hadn’t been told how long their jail term was, the gypsies tried to compare themselves to the vagabonds. They hadn’t committed any crime, they maintained in their petitions, and they had been doing forced labor for years.

  The governor of the arsenal of Cartagena even began to support freeing the gypsies, and he proposed that, if the authorities didn’t attend to their requests, they should at least designate a length for their jail term.

  The gypsies’ pleas were unsuccessful. In fact, the authorities ordered the governors of the arsenals to stop dealing with their petitions, as if they were merely a nuisance. Some specific requests did succeed, tenaciously filed by women unrelenting in their efforts to free their relatives, but those arbitrary decisions only managed to infuriate the vast majority who continued to be held in captivity.

  Meanwhile, the conditions both the men and women were living in got worse. The arsenals in Cádiz, as well as those in Cartagena and El Ferrol where some of the prisoners had been sent after an arduous sea voyage that ended the lives of many, still lacked the facilities to house them. And those men who had been separated from their families—injured, treated worse than slaves, desperate in the face of lifelong sentences—continued to rebel, mutiny and even run away. Few of these escapes ended well, but that didn’t keep the gypsies from trying, even shackled.

  The women, locked up in the House of Mercy in Saragossa and in the provisional jail in Valencia, suffered, if that were possible, greater hardships. They weren’t productive; no one had managed to make them work, and the money from the King to support them wasn’t forthcoming. Hunger and misery. Diseases. Attempts to flee, some successful. Constant disobedience and rebelliousness. While the men were fettered, the women were kept almost naked, covered at most with simple rags even at the risk of being unable to find priests willing to preach to that flock of lost souls. The authorities maintained that when they gave them clothes, they ran away.

  Families were scattered and married couples separated by hundreds of leagues. The girls remained with their mothers, if they still had them, and fate had kept them on the same course; the boys suffered more injustices. In the big roundup, those older than seven had gone with their fathers, uncles and older brothers to the arsenals, but those who were initially in the women’s group grew up in captivity. Once in the provisional jail in Málaga, before being transferred to the House of Mercy in Saragossa, the gypsy women had tried to hide the boys who were over the age where they were expected to start working. Since they had seized their papers, the authorities governing the provisional jails couldn’t know their exact ages, which their mothers lied about, taking advantage of their scant growth due to poor nutrition. Still, before their departure, twenty-five of the older boys were separated against their will from their mothers and taken to the arsenals. The same thing happened in Valencia, where almost five hundred women were crammed together. There forty boys were violently taken away from their mothers and relatives. Some managed to find their fathers and brothers, others discovered that they had been taken to a different arsenal, or that their family members had been transferred to another—as happened to those in Cádiz, who were taken to El Ferrol—or that they had simply already died.

  The boys held in the Royal House of Mercy in Saragossa were no exception. That year, 1754, almost thirty—Salvador among them—were sent to the arsenals; the fields where they had slept out in the open were used to plant wheat, according to the instructions given by the Countess of Aranda when she was made aware of the decision.

  Close to five hundred gypsy women witnessed the departure of the boys amid the tough security measures adopted by the alderman, who asked for reinforcements and lined up the soldiers between them. Their weapons—with their bayonets fixed—were at the ready to open fire on the young men. The soldiers’ presence intimidated the ragged women who, holding hands, crying, sought support from each other while the others silently watched the slow march of a line of boys who struggled to maintain their composure. All the women felt like mothers and sisters. Almost five years of hardship, hunger and misery; their efforts, their resistance, their struggle seemed to vanish with the march of those boys whose only crime had been to be born gypsy. Ana Vega, in the front row, with her flooded eyes fixed on Salvador, felt just like many others: those young men had symbolized the future and survival of their race, their people; the only hope they had left in that senseless prison.

  A deep, long, shattered wail rose from among the motley group of women. Some trembled, cowering. “Deblica barea!” Ana Vega heard someone shout at the end of the first stanza. The boys firmed their steps and lifted their heads as their magnificent goddess was praised; some of them raised their hands to their eyes, quickly, furtively, as they went through the gate of the House of Mercy. The debla accompanied their steps and continued to shred the gypsy women’s souls, no longer hounded by the soldiers, but standing motionless until long after the shadows of their sons faded into the distance.

  MELCHOR REALIZED that the threats he’d used on the wine seller outside the bullring to get him to reveal where he sourced the Negress’s cigarettes weren’t going to work there. The man had refused, but the tip of Melchor’s knife on his kidneys had made him change his mind. The cigarettes were distributed by Madrid’s ragmen, who went through the streets of the capital collecting the rags, papers and all sorts of castoffs and scraps that they traded in. Since olden times, the ragmen had also taken care of the many animals that died in the city and transported their bodies to a dungheap on the outskirts, beyond the Toledo Bridge, where they would skin them for leather.

  Melchor observed the place in the night: blended into the smoke from the bonfires where they burned the bones and other animal remains, close to a hundred ragmen were dealing with the horses killed that day in the bullring: some were skinning them, others struggled to keep away the packs of dogs that wanted to make off with the scraps. He had asked one of them, a guy covered in blood who held a large flaying knife in his hands.

  “Cigarettes? What cigarettes?” he answered curtly, without even stopping. “Nobody knows about that here. Don’t go looking for tr
ouble, gypsy.”

  They were hard men and women, toughened by privation, who wouldn’t hesitate to fight with them. Melchor wondered if he should offer them money for the information. They would just rob him; then they’d carve them up right there and toss them into the fire … Maybe they wouldn’t even bother. He saw how the ragman he’d asked was talking to others and pointing at them. A group came over to them.

  “Go, Martín,” he whispered as he hit the lad in the side.

  “Uncle, I’ve been hearing you sigh in the night over that woman for years …”

  “You two!” one of the ragmen then shouted.

  “I wouldn’t miss this for anything in the world,” the young man finished saying.

  “They are as afraid we’ll denounce them as they are of losing the business,” Melchor managed to warn him before the five dirty, scruffy ragmen covered in blood planted themselves a step away from them, all armed with knives and tools.

  “What’s your interest in the cigarettes?” inquired a wrinkly bald one, slighter than the others.

  “I’m not interested in the cigarettes, I’m interested in the Negress who makes them.”

  “And what’s the Negress to you?” put in another of the ragmen.

  Melchor sketched a smile. “I love her,” he confessed openly.

  One of the ragmen gave a start; another cocked his head and squinted his eyes to scrutinize him in the darkness. Even Martín turned toward him. Melchor’s sincere declaration of his love seemed to lessen the tension. Laughter was heard, more joyful than cynical.

  “An old gypsy and a Negress?”

  Melchor tightened his lips and nodded before answering. “Do you know her?”

  They shook their heads no.

  “If you heard her sing, you would understand.”

  The conversation caught the attention of the other ragmen; men and women joined the group.

  “The gypsy says that he loves the Negress who makes the cigarettes,” one of them explained to the others.

  “And she …” It was a woman who quickly formulated the question. “Does she love you back?”

  “I believe she does. Yes,” he affirmed categorically after thinking it over for a second.

  “Let’s finish them off!” proposed the small bald one. “We can’t trust …”

  A couple of men came toward the gypsies resolutely, leading with their large knives, while the others surrounded them.

  “Gonzalo, all of you!” A woman, with a naked little girl clinging to her leg, interrupted the attack. “Don’t ruin the only nice thing that has ever happened in all this …” She waved her hand over the foul dungheap, the smoke rising from the bonfires in the night, everything scattered with dead bodies and remains. “… all this filth.”

  “The gypsy will take over the business,” complained one of the men.

  Melchor decided to stay silent in the face of those two men’s knives; he knew that his and Martín’s fate depended on the sensitivity of a group of women who probably hadn’t even heard the word love in a long, long time. Morena, he thought then, tense, another fix I’m in because of you. I must love you! He sensed Martín’s nervousness; they could fight off the two they had in front of them, but the others would pounce on them mercilessly. He could already smell death when a third woman intervened.

  “And what would he do, sell the cigarettes across the entire city? We’re the only ones who can do that.”

  “Someday we’ll be found out and we’ll be sorry,” the woman with the little girl added despondently as she stroked the girl’s dirty cheek. “There’s already too much talk about the Negress’s cigarettes. The next time it might be the patrol instead of the gypsy; you see how easy it is to find out what we are up to. We would lose our husbands and sons. I would almost prefer the gypsy take over the business.”

  “I don’t want to take over anything,” Melchor then interjected. “I only want to find her.”

  In the gleam of the bonfires on the men’s faces, Melchor saw them looking at each other.

  “She’s right,” he heard one of them say behind him. “The other day, a tavern keeper on Toledo Street warned me that the constables of the patrol are asking questions about the cigarettes. It won’t be long before they find someone who will rat on us. Why kill these two when tomorrow we might not have anything anymore anyway?”

  THE SUN was coming up when they reached Torrejón de Ardoz. Servando, one of the beggars who acted as an intermediary, had come by that very night to collect what must have been a lot due to the bullfight, and he stubbornly protected the secret that was so profitable for him.

  “Gypsy,” said one of the women, tired of the discussions that were delaying their work with the dead horses, “you get him to take you to your beloved yourself.”

  Servando took a few steps back as soon as the ragmen went back to their duties and he was left alone with Melchor and Martín.

  “What’s the name of the Negress?”

  That was the only thing they talked about with the beggar on their way to Torrejón. Melchor needed to hear it, to confirm his hunch.

  “You want to find her and you don’t know her name?”

  “Answer me.”

  “Caridad.”

  When Servando pointed out the small adobe house that bordered the wheat fields, Melchor regretted not getting more information out of the beggar. A lot of time had passed. Would she still be alone? She could have … she could have found another man. The chaotic mixture of wonderful hopes that had enlivened his steps when he heard Caridad’s name now faltered when he saw that little house that seemed to shine in the light of the first rays of springtime sun. Would she still love him? Maybe she was bitter over being left in that hostel … The three men paused at a slight distance from the little house. Servando urged them to continue, but Martín stopped him with an authoritative sweep of his hand. What had her life been like all these years? Melchor asked himself, unable to control his anxiety. What paths had led her here? What …?

  The door to the little house opened and Caridad appeared, her attention focused on the fields, greeting the day.

  “Sing, morena.” His voice came out in a croak, hoarse, weak, inaudible!

  A second passed, two … Caridad turned her head slowly toward where they stood …

  “Sing,” repeated Melchor.

  “Stay here,” Martín threatened Servando in a whisper when he made as if to follow the gypsy, who was walking tall toward Caridad. Her round black face was already marked with shiny tears.

  Melchor was crying as well. He fought not to run to her, not to shout, not to howl up toward the heavens or down to hell; yet he did nothing to hold back his tears. He stopped close enough to touch her by simply extending his arm yet he didn’t dare.

  Standing before one another, they looked into each other’s eyes. He showed the palm of one dark hand with his fingers outstretched. She sketched a smile that was soon overcome by her trembling sobs. He frowned. Caridad looked up at the sky, for just a moment, then tried to smile again, but her tears got the better of her and Melchor saw a face clenched in a maelstrom of emotions that were bursting inside her. Still, he thought he could recognize them: happiness, hope, love … and he came closer.

  “Gypsy,” she then blubbered.

  They melted in an embrace and silenced the thousands of words in their throats with a thousand kisses.

  After leaving the apartment over the silversmiths’, Fray Joaquín pulled Milagros to a house on Pez Street, a road crammed with buildings filled with proud, haughty Madrileños, just as in Lavapiés, Barquillo and the capital’s other districts. The priest, fearing rumors, didn’t even dare go to a secret guesthouse, so he negotiated the rent of a couple of dingy rooms from the widow of a soldier who slept by the hearth and didn’t ask questions. Along the way, he told Milagros about his conversation with Blas.

  “Well, then let’s go to Triana,” she said quickly, grabbing him by the sleeve to stop him as they went up Ancha de San Bernardo Str
eet.

  The crowd went happily in the opposite direction, toward Alcalá Street and the bullring.

  “Pedro would kill you,” the priest objected as he examined the buildings and side streets.

  “My daughter is there!”

  Fray Joaquín stopped. “And what would we do?” he asked. “Go into the San Miguel alley and kidnap her? Do you think we have even the slightest chance? Pedro will get there before us, and as soon as he does he will spread all sorts of malicious lies about you; the entire gypsy settlement will consider you a …” The friar stopped there, his words hanging in the air. “You wouldn’t even get as far as … we wouldn’t even get across the pontoon bridge. Come on,” he added tenderly a few seconds later.

  Fray Joaquín kept walking, but Milagros didn’t follow him; the flood of people seemed to swallow him up. When he realized, the friar retraced his steps.

  “What does it matter if I get killed?” she murmured between sobs, tears already running down her cheeks. “I was already dead before …”

  “Don’t say that.” Fray Joaquín was about to take her by the shoulders but he stopped himself. “There has to be another solution, and I will find it. I promise you.”

  Another solution? Milagros frowned as she clung to that promise. She nodded and walked beside him. It was true, she admitted to herself when they turned down Pez Street: Pedro would defame her, and Bartola would obediently confirm all the slander the bastard could think up. A shiver ran down her spine as she imagined Reyes, La Trianera, vilifying her. The Garcías would enjoy publicly repudiating her; the Carmonas would do it too, their honor offended. Milagros had broken the law: there were no gypsy prostitutes, and all the gypsies would turn against her. How could she show up in the San Miguel alley in those circumstances?