The Barefoot Queen Read online

  “Laugh!” shouted the corporal, addressing all those arrested. “Laugh now, because you won’t be laughing where you’re headed to. I promise you that!” Then he turned to Caridad. “And you, didn’t I tell you to—”

  “General,” he was interrupted by a voice from the group, “where we’re headed, can we bring the King’s mule?”

  The corporal turned red and, amid the laughter and mocking, Tomás silently urged Caridad to escape.

  TRIANA WAS also seized by the royal army. A large part of the troops were in the San Miguel alley and on Cava Nueva, places with primarily gypsy populations, but there were still patrols going through the streets in case anyone had escaped or hidden in some payo’s house. The King had foretold grave consequences for those who helped them, and anonymous denunciations, both founded and unfounded, began as a result of old quarrels between neighbors.

  Caridad could only think of one place to go and she headed there: the monastery of preachers at San Jacinto. But the churches and monasteries were also under surveillance by the soldiers. So she tried entering Triana along Castilla Street and passing in front of the church of Our Lady of O. Caridad always carefully watched that sober church: she didn’t know of any Orisha personified by the Virgin of O, but Fray Joaquín had imbued her with the affection that he himself felt for that temple: “It was built exclusively with alms collected by the brotherhood,” he commented to her one day. “That is why she is so beloved in Triana.”

  Caridad evaded the patrol of soldiers stationed in front of the main façade of the church, and she heard an officer heatedly arguing with a priest. The same thing was happening in the parish of Santa Ana, and in Sancti Espiritus, and in Remedios, and in Victoria, at the Minims, the Martyrs and San Jacinto. The King had managed to get a papal bull that allowed the soldiers to remove the gypsies who were taking sanctuary, so all those who had fled and sought their salvation in ecclesiastical asylum were being removed, not without vehement arguments with the priests who were defending the privileges of that atavistic institution the gypsies resorted to so often.

  The situation at San Jacinto was worse than at the church of the Virgin of O. Given its proximity to the San Miguel alley and to Cava Nueva, there were several gypsies who had taken asylum in that church before the troops entered. Almost all of the twenty-eight friar preachers who made up the community were huddled together with their prior, determined to impede access into the temple under construction to a lieutenant who kept showing his order from the King. Fray Joaquín soon noticed Caridad’s presence, since her old straw hat stood out amid the crowd waiting to see how the dispute was resolved. The young clergyman left his brothers and ran toward her.

  “What happened in the gypsy settlement?” he asked even before reaching her. His features were pinched with worry.

  “The soldiers came … They were shooting. They arrested the gypsies …”

  “And Milagros?”

  His shout attracted people’s attention. Fray Joaquín grabbed Caridad by the arm and pulled her a few paces aside.

  “And Milagros?” he repeated.

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “What do you mean? They’re arresting all the gypsies. Was she arrested?”

  “No. Arrested, no. Tomás told me …”

  The clergyman’s sigh of relief interrupted her words. “Glory be!” he exclaimed, lifting his eyes to the heavens.

  “What can I do, Fray Joaquín? Why are they arresting the gypsies? And where could Milagros be?”

  “Cachita, wherever she is, she’s better off than here. Of that you can be sure. And as for why they’re arresting them—”

  Applause and cheers interrupted the conversation and forced them to turn toward San Jacinto. The prior had given in and three gypsy men, several children and a woman with a baby in her arms left the church escorted by the soldiers.

  “They’re arresting them for being different,” declared the friar when the group of military men and gypsies had vanished in the direction of La Cava. “I can assure you that they are no worse than many of those they call payos.”

  FRAY JOAQUÍN didn’t have much problem getting a devout family of shrimpers on Larga Street to take Caridad in for a few days; some coins from the preacher’s own pocket helped them to make their decision. Caridad set herself up in the shed in a tiny garden behind the fisherman’s house. Sitting among some old tools and fishing supplies piled up there, she had little to do besides smoke and worry about Milagros. The hospitality of those “good Christians,” as Fray Joaquín called them, disappeared as soon as the preacher did.

  The day after the arrests, all of Triana came out to witness the gypsies’ departure over the pontoon bridge. Mixed into the crowd, Caridad saw Rafael García—El Conde—dragging his feet with his gaze lowered, at the head of a long row of men and boys over seven years old who walked behind him, all tied together with a thick rope. Their destination: Seville’s royal jail. Many of the townspeople insulted them and spat on them. “Heretics! Thieves!” they shouted as the gypsies passed, while they threw rubbish and litter that had piled up on the streets. Caridad couldn’t make out in the gypsies any of the sarcasm she had been surprised to see the day before at the settlement. Now they all knew the royal orders: from the jail they would be transferred to La Carraca, the military arsenal of Cádiz, where they would be committed to forced labor for the rest of their lives.

  In addition to keeping them from taking sanctuary and confiscating their goods to sell at public auction and pay the expenses of the raid, the soldiers had also repossessed the documents that identified them as “old Castilians” and the residency papers from those who had them. Those official documents were the only way the gypsies could prove they weren’t vagrants or delinquents; repossessing them—even though many were forged—meant that from that point on they couldn’t even confirm their identity and status. From one day to the next, most of the gypsy blacksmiths from the San Miguel alley and many others who had spent years working and living with the payos had become criminals.

  Walking halfway along the rope, Caridad recognized Pedro García, Milagros’s impossible love. What would the girl say if she saw him there? Milagros’s eyes sparkled in the night when she remembered him, especially once Alejandro’s ghost had stopped tormenting her. Caridad also saw José Carmona, downtrodden, hiding his face amid the insults.

  After the men came the women along with the girls and the boys under seven, all tied with ropes and watched over by the soldiers almost more closely than the men were. Caridad recognized Ana, Milagros’s mother, and so many others that she knew from the alley, some with their little ones on their backs. She felt a shiver as the gypsy women passed: they had not lost their pride. They weren’t silent, they hurled abuse and spat back despite also knowing what awaited them: imprisonment for an unspecified length of time in a women’s jail.

  Caridad heard someone shout out, “Witches!”

  Instantly, the rope curved and several gypsies pounced on the women in the crowd who had insulted them. Seized by panic, the women tried to back up into the people packed behind them; the soldiers had to stop them.

  In the ruckus, Ana saw Caridad. They had heard rumors of shots fired, deaths and struggles in the settlement.

  “And my girl?” she screamed.

  Caridad was focused on avoiding the soldiers’ blows.

  “Morena!” This time Caridad did hear her. “How’s Milagros?”

  Caridad was about to answer when all of a sudden she realized that many of the people who surrounded her were staring, as if condemning her for speaking to the gypsy women. She hesitated. She couldn’t take on the crowd … but Milagros … and Ana was her mother! When she lifted her head, the rope had already started moving and she could only manage to see Ana’s back.

  Behind the people crowded together on both sides of the street, Caridad followed the rope the women were tied to. She got ahead of Ana and stationed herself in the Plaza del Altozano, in the front row, in front of t
he Inquisition Castle, where it was impossible for the gypsy woman not to notice her. But when she saw her approaching and the shouts and insults of the crowd intensified around her, she was once again overtaken by fear.

  Ana saw her. And she saw her lower her head as the rope passed.

  “Help me,” she urged the women on the rope with her. “I have to get over to where that Negro woman is, over to my father’s morena, there, to the left, do you see her?”

  “The one who works the tobacco?” someone asked her from further up on the rope.

  “Yes, that’s the one. I need to know about my daughter.”

  “You’ll be so close you could smoke a cigar with her,” someone assured her from behind.

  And she was. When Ana passed in front of Caridad, the gypsy women threw themselves to the left and caught the soldiers off guard. The rope curved again and some fell to the ground taking a few soldiers with them. Ana imitated them and rolled on the ground.

  “Caridad!” she shouted in a firm voice, lying at her feet.

  The Negress reacted to her urgent tone.

  “Come closer!”

  She did and then knelt beside her.

  “What about Milagros? What’s become of my girl?”

  The soldiers began to regain order, some lifting the fallen gypsy women, others inserting themselves between the ones who remained standing, but the gypsies, keeping an eye on Ana, resisted and insulted the crowd, leaping onto them again and again.

  “What news do you have of her?” insisted Ana. “Was she arrested?”

  “No,” affirmed Caridad.

  “She’s free?”

  “Yes.”

  Ana closed her eyes for a second. “Find her! Take care of her!” she then begged Caridad. “She is just a girl. Find Melchor with her and seek out the protection of the gypsies … if there are any left. Tell her that I love her and I will always love her.”

  Suddenly, Caridad went flying backward from a soldier’s boot to her shoulder. Ana allowed herself to be lifted up and made an almost imperceptible gesture to the other women. The fighting stopped, except for a little girl who kept kicking a soldier.

  Before going back to her position on the rope, Ana turned; Caridad had fallen to the ground and was trying to recover her hat amid the people’s feet. Had Ana just asked her to take care of her daughter? she wondered as she noticed that her entire body was soaked in cold sweat.

  Old María held Milagros back when she tried to return to Triana.

  “Be still, girl,” she ordered in a whisper when she saw the infantry soldiers approaching them. “Get on your knees.”

  They were off the path, collecting licorice. It wasn’t the best season for it, the healer had complained, but she needed those roots to treat cough and indigestion. There were those who said they were also aphrodisiacs, but María avoided mentioning that property to Milagros, telling herself that there would be time later for learning such things. In the silence of the wide Triana lowlands, among grapevines, olive and orange trees, the two women had pricked up their ears to catch the murmur that became louder and louder. Soon they saw a long column of armed infantry soldiers advancing stiffly, dressed in white dress coats whose front coattails were folded back and fastened with clasps, tight waistcoats beneath, breeches, gaiters buttoned above the knees and black three-cornered hats over complicated white wigs with three horizontal curls on each side that went down to their necks and covered their ears.

  Milagros watched the soldiers with their serious faces, sweating under the summer sun that beat down on them, and wondered what reason there could be behind such a deployment.

  “I don’t know,” answered Old María as she got up with difficulty after the army had marched past. “But I’m sure we are better off behind their rifles than in front of them.”

  It wasn’t long before they found out. They followed them at a prudent distance, both attentive and quick to hide. They watched how the soldiers divided into two columns when they were out of Triana and they exchanged a horrified look when they noticed that one of the columns was taking up position around the gypsy settlement of La Cartuja.

  “We have to warn them,” said Milagros.

  The old woman didn’t answer. Milagros turned toward her and found a wrinkled, trembling face; the healer kept her eyes half-closed as she thought hard.

  “María,” insisted the girl. “They are going after our people! We must warn them—”

  “No,” interrupted the elderly woman with her eyes on the settlement.

  Her tone, and the refusal exhaled from her very innards, was that of a resigned old gypsy tired of fighting.

  “But …”

  “No.” María was emphatic. “It will just be one more time, another detention, but we will move on, as always. What do you want to do? Stand up and scream? Risk one of these bastards shooting you? Run to the settlement? They’ll arrest you … And what good would it do? Our people are already surrounded, but they know how to defend themselves. I’m sure that your mother and your grandfather would support my decision.” Then, doubting her obedience, she gripped the girl’s forearm tightly.

  Crouched behind some brush, they waited for the assault to happen; it was as if they were being forced to witness the downfall of their people, to experience their pain. They didn’t see anything. For a long while all they could hear was the coming and going of people in the settlement mixed with Milagros’s muffled sobs, which became uncontrollable crying when the captain ordered the assault. María pulled on Milagros when she tried to peek out and struggled to keep the girl quiet, but what did it matter now? The shooting and the screaming thundered through the plains. The old woman grabbed Milagros’s head, hugged her tightly and rocked her. The gypsies who managed to get past the siege ran toward where they were; no one chased them, except for random bullets.

  “Mother … Father …” the healer could hear Milagros say as the commotion died down. “Mother … Cachita …”

  With each moan, a mouthful of warm breath caressed the old woman’s chest.

  “The morena isn’t a gypsy,” she thought to say. “Nothing will happen to her.”

  “And my parents?” The girl turned after escaping the old woman’s embrace. “The same thing must have happened in Triana. You saw how the soldiers split up …”

  With her palms open, the old woman grabbed the girl’s flushed face with bloodshot eyes and tears streaming from them.

  “They are, girl. They are gypsies. And that means they are strong. They will prevail.”

  Milagros shook her head. “And me? What will become of me?” she sobbed.

  María hesitated. What could she tell her: I’ll protect you? An old woman and a fifteen-year-old girl … What would they do? Where would they go? How would they make enough to live on?

  “At least you are free,” she said, choosing to scold her instead, and dropped the hands that held her face. “Do you want to go with them? You can. All you have to do is walk a few paces …” She ended the sentence by pointing toward the settlement with her hooked finger.

  Milagros took the blow. Scrutinized by the old woman’s penetrating gaze, she sniffled, wiped her nose on her forearm and straightened her neck.

  Then: “I don’t want to,” she said.

  The healer nodded, satisfied. “Cry for your parents’ luck,” she said. “You should. But defend your freedom, girl. That is what they would want. Freedom is the only thing we gypsies have.”

  They waited for sunset hidden among the thicket.

  “You can’t run,” Milagros said to the old woman. “It’s better that we wait for night to fall.”

  They chewed on licorice roots to calm their tension. At noon, when the sun moved from east to west and the land belonged to no one, with the sound of the soldiers’ shots and the gypsies’ screams still floating in the air, Milagros remembered Alejandro and the blunderbuss shot that destroyed his neck and head. It had been a year since his death. Crouched on the ground, the girl delicately smoothed her
blue skirt, where faint bloodstains could still be seen, as much as she washed it. If it hadn’t been for that event, they would have arrested her, as they had surely done to the gypsies in San Miguel alley. She thought she could feel his presence in the shiver that ran up her spine; it was his moment, that of the souls of the dead. However, a surprising feeling of tranquillity overcame her after the shiver, as if Alejandro had come to defend her with the same bravery he had shown beating on the potter’s door.

  Good gypsy! she told herself just as laughter from the settlement, prompted by the discussion over the King’s supposed mule, brought her back to reality. Before giving María a quizzical look, she checked that the sun had already passed its peak.

  The old woman shrugged at the sound of laughter, paradoxical under such circumstances.

  “You hear them? They’re laughing. They can’t keep us down,” she declared.

  THE VILLAGE of Camas was barely half a league from where they were hiding; however, in the night, walking slowly in the moonlight, being startled by and hiding from even their own noises, it took them more than an hour to reach the outskirts.

  “Where are we going?” whispered Milagros.

  María tried to get her bearings in the night.

  “There is a small farmhouse nearby … That way.” She pointed with her atrophied finger.

  “Who are they?”

  “An unhappily married couple, with more kids in their house than fruit trees on the land they’ve leased.” The healer now walked with firm, decisive steps. “I made the mistake of taking pity on them and refusing a couple of eggs they wanted to give me the first time I cured one of their runny-nosed kids. I think that every time they’ve called me since then, they’ve offered me the very same eggs.”

  Milagros answered with a forced laugh. “That’s what you get for doing favors,” she said.

  Should I tell her that it was her grandfather Melchor who begged me to go cure that boy? wondered the old woman. And that his skin was of a darker shade than his siblings? In any case, she laughed to herself, there weren’t many resemblances to be found among any of that peasant woman’s other children either, and she was known for her exuberant flesh and loose ways.