The Barefoot Queen Read online

  “I know them … I know them …” she then replied. “I’ve got them on the tip of my tongue,” she added, touching it. The priest waited a few seconds, his fingers crossed on the tabletop. “But they don’t want to come out, those d—”

  “And the prayers?” the priest interrupted her before the girl said something inappropriate. “What prayers are you familiar with?”

  “All of them,” she answered confidently.

  “Tell me the Our Father.”

  “Father, you asked me if I’m familiar with them, not if I know them.”

  The priest’s face didn’t change. He knew what gypsies were like. He regretted having accepted the responsibility for helping this insolent gypsy girl, but the principal parish priest seemed very interested in baptizing her and bringing the gypsy community into the church fold, and he was just a simple priest without a curacy or benefice. His lack of reaction emboldened Milagros, who reached a similar conclusion: the priests wanted her to be baptized.

  “What three people make up the Holy Trinity?” the man insisted.

  “Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar,” exclaimed Milagros, stifling a giggle. She had heard that joke from her grandfather, in the settlement, when he was making fun of Uncle Tomás. They all would laugh.

  But this time even Caridad, who remained a step behind Milagros, in her slave shirt with her straw hat in her hands, gave a start. The priest was surprised by her reaction.

  “Do you know?” he asked her.

  “Yes … Father,” answered Caridad.

  The priest tried to urge her to list them with his gestures, but Caridad had already lowered her gaze and kept it on the floor.

  “Who are they?” he ended up asking.

  “The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost,” she recited.

  Milagros turned toward her friend and listened to the following questions, all directed at Caridad.

  “Are you baptized?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Do you know the Creed, the other prayers and the commandments?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Well, teach them to her!” he exclaimed, pointing to Milagros. “Didn’t you want her to accompany you? As a priest, when an adult … or something similar,” he added sarcastically, “wants to enter into the holy sacrament of baptism, I am obliged to meet that person and testify that their life is governed by the three Christian virtues: faith, hope and charity. Listen: the first is what every good Christian should believe, and that is in the Creed. The second refers to how you must act, for which you must know the commandments of the Lord and of the Holy Church; and lastly, the third: what you can expect of God, and that is found in the Our Father and other prayers. Don’t come back here without having learned them all,” he added, abandoning the idea of indoctrinating the gypsy in the catechism of Father Eusebio. He’d settle for that brazen girl being able to recite the Creed!

  Without giving her a chance to reply, the priest got up from the table and repeatedly shook both hands with his fingers extended, as if scaring off a couple of pesky little animals, to indicate that they leave the sacristy.

  “How did it go in there?” asked La Trianera, who was waiting for them at one of the church doors, where she had used her time well, discreetly asking for alms, predicting fertility for each of the young female parishioners who went inside.

  “I’m already half baptized,” responded Milagros seriously. “It’s true,” she insisted to the suspicious woman. “All I need is the other half.”

  But Reyes was no dull paya and she wasn’t about to be outdone. “Well, be careful, girl,” she answered, pointing at her with a finger that slid through the air from side to side, at the height of the girl’s waist, “that they don’t cut you up to baptize the other half, and your witty repartee doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.”

  MILAGROS HAD trouble retaining the prayers and commandments that Caridad tried to teach her, reciting them wearily just as she had at Sunday mass at the Cuban sugar mill. Bartola, the old aunt, grew tired of listening to her faltering morning repetitions as she sat in the dilapidated chair she’d brought with her from the other side of the alley and set up beside the window in Milagros’s house as if it were her prize possession. One morning she solved the problem with a shout.

  “Sing them, girl! You’ll remember them if you sing them.”

  From that day on, the apathetic stammering turned into ditties and Milagros began to learn prayers and precepts to the rhythm of fandangos, seguidillas, zarabandas and chaconas.

  It was precisely that natural facility, that talent she had for absorbing music and songs, that brought her the most problems and heartaches when it came time to learn the Christmas carols she was to sing in Santa Ana.

  “Do you know how to read sheet music?” Before Milagros could answer, the choirmaster himself waved his hand through the air when he realized how ridiculous his question was.

  “The only thing I know how to read are palms,” replied the young woman. “And I can already see much misfortune on yours.”

  Milagros was tense. Every member of the Santa Ana choir was judging her, and it hadn’t been difficult to imagine what everyone in the choir, the tenor, and the organist—except for the boys, they were all professional musicians—were thinking of her. What was a barefoot, dirty gypsy girl doing singing Christmas carols in their church? was what the girl read in their faces.

  And what she could now read in the bald, paunchy choirmaster’s was a triumphant expression that transformed into a deafening shout.

  “Reading palms? Get out of here!” The man pointed to the exit. “The church is no place for gypsy sorcery! And take your Negress with you!” he added, indicating Caridad, positioned at a distance.

  Even La Trianera herself, who now begged for alms openly outside the church while she waited for them, as if the fact that Milagros was going to sing Christmas carols gave her some sort of license, ran to tell her husband about the girl’s expulsion.

  “If she were already married to Pedro, I would slap that fickle girl,” she added.

  “You’ll have your chance,” assured her husband tersely, rushing to Santa Ana before the parish priest summoned him to be rebuked.

  He returned blind with rage: he had had to ask for forgiveness a thousand times and humiliate himself before an incensed cleric. Back in the alley, on that bright winter day, Rafael saw Milagros listening entranced to Pedro, as if nothing had happened. He decided against approaching her then and sought the help of Inocencio, who returned with him to where the young couple was chatting.

  The girl didn’t even see them arrive, but Pedro did, and from his grandfather’s gait and snorting he could see what was coming; he moved a few steps away.

  “They won’t free your parents,” El Conde spat at Milagros. He was improvising.

  “What …?” she stammered.

  “They’re not going to free them, Milagros,” lied Inocencio in support of El Conde, who had promised the parish priest that Milagros would come back and behave.

  “But … why? They said that the files had already been sent to Málaga and La Carraca.”

  “It’s as simple as saying that a new witness has shown up, who challenges all the other secret information,” answered El Conde. “They not only had to be married by the Church, they also had to prove they weren’t living as gypsies, which with the Vegas will be easy to refute.”

  Milagros brought her hands to her face. What have I done? she asked herself, inconsolable.

  “What difference does it make if I sing in the church or not?” She tried to defend herself.

  “You don’t understand, girl. There is nothing more important to them than recovering for God the sheep that have gone astray. And nowadays those sheep, after having expelled the Jews and the crypto-Muslims, are us: the gypsies. They haven’t sung Christmas carols in several years at Santa Ana, and the priests have agreed to restore the tradition, with a gypsy singing them! You singing Christmas carols in a church means publicly sh
owing that they have managed to bring us into the fold. Even the Archbishop of Seville was aware of the project! But now …”

  The two patriarchs exchanged a look of complicity as soon as they saw the trembling in Milagros’s chin; the girl was about to burst into tears. Both of them made as if they were leaving.

  “No!” She stopped them. “I will sing! I swear! What can be done? What can I …?”

  “We don’t know, girl,” answered Inocencio.

  “Maybe if you went to ask for forgiveness …” mused Rafael, twisting his mouth to say that even with that there was little chance.

  And she asked for forgiveness. Of the priests. Of the choirmaster. Of all the members of the choir, including the boys. Caridad watched her: standing, head bowed, browbeaten before them, not knowing what to do with those hands that were used to fluttering happily around her, scratching out each one of the words that Inocencio had recommended she say.

  “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to offend anyone and least of all Jesus Christ and the Virgin in their own home. I beg you to forgive me. I will make an effort to sing.”

  La Trianera had stopped chasing the townspeople for alms and had entered the church to enjoy the girl’s humiliation. “You’ll have your chance,” her husband had assured her, and by God would she get her chance to give her the smack she deserved.

  After several boys in the choir and some of the older musicians accepted her apologies, one of the priests urged her to kneel on the floor in front of the high altar and pray to atone for her mistake. There, in front of the sixteen panels that comprised the retablo that fitted into the octagonal apse of the church, Milagros, during the two long hours that the choir practice lasted, babbled the ditty she had learned. Christmas was approaching and everything had to be ready.

  Despite Milagros’s apologies, the next few days, in which Rafael arranged for her not to sing at the inn so that she could focus on Santa Ana, were a real trial for the girl, who, with her parents’ freedom on her conscience, had to bite her tongue at the choirmaster’s shouts. He stopped the rehearsals again and again to blame and insult her, crying out to the heavens at the misfortune of having to work with an ignoramus who knew nothing about reading music, or singing, and was unable to replace handclapping and guitars for the organ.

  “A gypsy!” he shouted, pointing to her. “A dirty beggar who is used to singing vulgar ballads for drunks and prostitutes! They’re all thieves!”

  Milagros, exposed to ridicule in front of everyone, tolerated it without even hiding the tears that ran down her cheeks and when the music played again she made an effort in body and soul. She felt … she was sure that the choirmaster and everyone else didn’t want her to sing for Christmas and they would do everything they could to keep it from happening.

  Her suspicions were confirmed three days before Christmas. The choirmaster arrived at rehearsal with the three parish priests at Santa Ana; other presbyters were positioned beside the sacristy. He didn’t insult her that day, but his complaints and interruptions were constant, all of them followed by desperate glances at the priests trying to transmit to them the impossibility of the concert going off well.

  “I’m not even trying,” lamented the choirmaster on one occasion, “to get her to sing an aria in the Italian style, although that is what this great temple deserves. I chose a Spanish Christmas carol, a classic with coplas and seguidillas, but she can’t even do that!”

  Milagros saw the priests talking among themselves and was terrified to see how, with the choirmaster’s wild gesticulations, their anxiety was turning into the certainty that they had made a mistake. She wasn’t going to sing! She shook all over. She looked at Caridad, who stood stock-still in the same place. She observed with horror how the first priest opened his hands in an unequivocal gesture of surrender.

  They were leaving! Milagros thought she would faint. The choirmaster hid a smile as he made a small bow when the parish priests passed him. “Son of a bitch,” muttered the girl under her breath. Her faintness turned into rage: Son of a bitch!

  “Son of a …!” she burst out before another shout interrupted her.

  “Master!” Reyes, as fat as she was, was running through the church. She stopped to make a clumsy genuflection and cross herself in front of the high altar, then got up and continued making crosses on her forehead and chest until she reached them. “Reverend Fathers,” she panted, opening her arms to keep them from walking, “do you know what my people say?”

  The choirmaster sighed; the parish priests remained impassive, as if they were granting her the favor of allowing her to speak.

  “The oldest donkey gets the heaviest load and the worst tack,” said La Trianera.

  Someone in the choir laughed, perhaps one of the boys.

  “Do you know what it means?”

  Milagros ran her eyes over them, incredulous.

  “Tell us,” allowed the first priest again with a look of acquiescence.

  “Yes. I will tell you, Reverend Father: it means that the old folk, those”—she pointed toward the singers, who had their eyes glued on her—“are the ones who have to bear the heaviest load and the worst tack. Not the girl. You won’t get her to do it,” she added, addressing the choirmaster. “She is just a simple gypsy, as your honor keeps repeating, a sinner who wants to be baptized. We, the gypsies, are the ones who want to come to this church and hear one of our own sing to honor the Baby Jesus on the day he was born. Listen. Listen, all of you. She does know them. She knows the carols. Silence, everyone!” Reyes dared to insist. Astute, she sensed that her speech had pleased the priests, now … now Milagros’s singing had to please them too. “Sing, girl, sing as you know how.”

  Milagros started off with a carol, in her own way, forgetting about the choirmaster’s complicated instructions. Her voice rose and echoed inside the mostly empty church. The parish priests turned toward the girl. Behind them, in the sacristy, one of the other presbyters leaned on the wall and closed his eyes and let himself be carried away by the song; another, older, clapped along. They didn’t cheer like at the inn, no one shouted out rude remarks, but as soon as the carol ended, the girl knew that she had them captivated.

  “Did you hear that?” Reyes challenged the choirmaster.

  The man nodded with a frown, not daring to look at the priests.

  “Well, based on that, load up the old donkeys!”

  Milagros, unable to move a single muscle to check, wondered if any of them were smiling now.

  “Let the old donkeys adapt to the girl’s rhythm, to her tone, to her way of reading music or whatever you call it; she’s just an ignorant gypsy, the young donkey.”

  For a few seconds both Reyes and Milagros thought they could even hear the priests thinking it over.

  “Let it be so,” declared the first priest after exchanging a look with the others. “Maestro, the girl will sing her way, the way she just did, and let the others adapt to her style.”

  And Milagros was there on that Christmas morning of 1749, dressed in a black cloak of rough cloth borrowed from the priests, with sleeves that covered her from her head to her bare toes. The day before she had been baptized after proving she knew how to recite the prayers and commandments. They didn’t demand more knowledge from her and, since she was an adult, they sprinkled her with water instead of dipping her in the baptismal font in the presence of her godparents: Inocencio and Reyes. Now the girl was looking out of the corner of her eye nervously at the people who were gradually accumulating inside Santa Ana, all clean and dressed in their finest clothes. The men were all in black, in the Spanish style, since there were few Frenchified men who dressed in military style in that neighborhood; the women were sober, covered in black or white mantillas, rosaries of mother of pearl or silver, some gold, and countless fans that fluttered constantly in their gloved hands. Milagros tried to imagine that she was at the inn, where with the help of Old María and Sagrario she had managed to control the trembling of her hands and the tightness i
n her chest that barely let her breathe, but the atmosphere in the church was nothing like the chaos of wine and liquor flowing from table to table and the men pouncing on prostitutes. All of Triana was meeting at the church, all of Triana was anxious to hear the gypsy sing, restoring a tradition that had been lost some years back.

  She focused her attention on the bald, paunchy choirmaster. He wore some glasses that she had never seen at rehearsals and they gave him a serious air that contrasted with his frantic comings and goings as he organized and reorganized the choir. He didn’t deign to look at Milagros through those new glasses. Amid the murmur of people waiting for the start of mass and the sound of the hundreds of fans and rosary beads clinking together, the already nervous girl worried that the choirmaster might do something underhanded to disrupt her. The final rehearsals, accommodated to her way of singing, had been magnificent, or at least the girl had thought so, but who could be sure that the choirmaster, his pride wounded, wouldn’t take his revenge on the day when all of Triana was watching her? The priests would get angry and her parents’ freedom would again be imperiled.

  What the girl didn’t know was that the others had thought the same thing after Reyes told them how she publicly challenged the choirmaster. Rafael and Inocencio only needed to exchange a look, and on Christmas morning, at dawn, three gypsies, two Garcías and a Carmona, were waiting for the maestro at the door to his house. Few words were needed to make the man understand that he had to make that performance the most splendid of his life.

  The mass had begun, solemnly concelebrated by the parish priests of Santa Ana, all three dressed in luxurious chasubles embroidered with gold thread; the other deacons followed the ceremony from the same high altar or from the choir, almost at the end of the main nave. Milagros observed the rows of the faithful closest to the apse, where Triana’s illustrious families sat. On one end of the first she recognized Rafael and Inocencio with their wives, humble in their dress and demeanor, as if on this occasion they had left their gypsy arrogance at home. The others, Caridad included, must be at the back of the temple, supposing they were able to get in, since Santa Ana wasn’t large enough for all its faithful.