The Barefoot Queen

  “She was moving out of the apartment,” maintained the priest. He also told her about the constable’s words that had alerted him as to what was going on upstairs.

  “Blas. It must have been him,” said Milagros, although she didn’t even remember him being there. “He is always with Pedro. If anyone knows where my husb—where that rogue is,” she corrected herself, “it’s Blas. He has to know where my daughter is.”

  The next morning, early, after buying freshly baked white bread, some vegetables and mutton in the Plaza Mayor, and paying an Asturian from the Puerta del Sol to escort him back home with a large pitcher of water, Fray Joaquín was finally ready to set out in search of the constable. Milagros was in the doorway. “Go on!” she ordered to put an end to his list of warnings: Don’t go out; don’t open the door to anyone; don’t answer …

  “Get going for once and for all!” shouted the gypsy, expecting to hear his footsteps fading into the distance.

  Fray Joaquín rushed downstairs like a naughty boy caught red-handed. The bustle of Mayor Street and urgency of finding the constable, of helping Milagros, of making sure that the spark he saw in her eyes when he solemnly promised to find María didn’t go out, made him banish all doubt. Not so for Milagros, who paced through the house from the room that overlooked San Miguel Plaza, where Fray Joaquín had slept, to the one over the silversmiths’, where she had lain down.

  During the night she hadn’t been able to fall asleep. And he, was he sleeping? she’d asked herself over and over again as she lay in bed. It must have been the first time in her life that she’d spent the night without the company of one of her kind, and that made her nervous. After all, the friar was a man. She trembled at the mere thought that Fray Joaquín … Cowering in her bed she let the hours pass, aware of any movement in the hallway, as the faces of the noblemen who had forced themselves on her paraded before her eyes. Nothing happened.

  Of course not! she told herself in the morning, after Fray Joaquín left; the sunlight erasing suspicions and nightmares. Fray Joaquín is a good man. Isn’t that right? she asked the Immaculate Virgin who presided over the room; she ran a finger over her blue and gold robe. The Virgin would help her.

  María was the only thing that mattered to her now. But what would she do after getting her girl back? Fray Joaquín had made her a proposition years back, but she couldn’t be sure of his intentions now. Milagros hesitated. She felt a deep fondness for him, but …

  “Why are you looking at me?” she addressed the statue again. “What do you want me to do? He’s the only thing I have; the only person willing to help me; the only one who …” She turned her head toward the straw mattress. A cloak, a headscarf, the sheet … She pulled on it and covered the image. “When I get María back I will decide what to do about my relationship with Fray Joaquín,” she declared to the wrapped statue in front of her.

  You see that, girl? Then the words of Santiago Fernández when they were walking through the Andévalo echoed in her ears, as if he were beside her, as if those vast stretches of arid land opened up before her as the old patriarch pointed to the horizon. That is our route. For how long? What does it matter? The only important thing is the present moment.

  “The only thing important is the present moment,” she told the Virgin.

  FRAY JOAQUÍN had trouble finding the constable. “He patrols Lavapiés,” Milagros had assured him, but that day they were opening Madrid’s new bullring, built beyond the Alcalá Gate, and people had taken to the streets expecting a great bullfight. The priest walked along the streets of Magdalena, La Hoz, Ave María and many others until, once again in the Lavapiés plaza, he saw a couple of constables dressed in their black suits with ruffs and with their truncheons. Blas recognized him and, before the friar could reach them, he excused himself and went over to Fray Joaquín.

  “Congratulations, Father,” he exclaimed once he was standing before him. “You did what I didn’t dare to.”

  Fray Joaquín stuttered. “You admit that?”

  “I have been thinking a lot about it, yes.”

  Were his words born of his fear of being denounced or were they sincere? The constable imagined what was going through the friar’s head.

  “We all make mistakes,” he tried to convince him.

  “You call a woman’s murder a mistake?”

  “Murder?” Blas feigned ignorance. “I left the gypsies in an argument between husband and wife …”

  “But on the street you warned the old gypsy woman to be careful, that he would kill her too,” the friar interrupted him.

  “A figure of speech, a figure of speech. Was he really trying to kill her?”

  Fray Joaquín shook his head. “What do you know of Pedro García?” he asked, and immediately waved his hand to silence the constable’s excuses. “We have to find him!” he added firmly. “A mother has a right to see her daughter.”

  Blas snorted, pursed his lips and looked at the point on the ground where he rested his truncheon; he remembered the little girl’s sadness.

  “They left Madrid,” he decided to confess. “Just yesterday they got on a wagon headed to Seville.”

  “Are you sure? Was the girl with him?”

  “Yes. The girl was with him.” Blas looked the friar in the eyes before continuing. “That gypsy is a bad person, Father. There was nothing more he could get out of Madrid, and after you intervened, he was sure to have problems. He is going to take refuge in Triana, with his people, but he will kill the Barefoot Girl if she dares to go anywhere near, I assure you. He will never allow her to reveal to the others what happened these past few years and ruin his life.” He paused and then added seriously, “Father, make no mistake about it: before getting on that wagon back home, Pedro García will have paid one of his relatives to kill the Barefoot Girl. I know him; I know what he’s like and how he behaves. I’m sure of it, Father, sure. And they will follow through. She is a Vega and no longer of any use to anyone. They will kill her … and you along with her.”

  Triana and death. With his stomach clenched and his heart beating wildly, Fray Joaquín rushed back home. It was public knowledge that he had taken Milagros in: Francisca, the priest at San Miguel, the constables, they all knew; the marquis had warned him about that. What would whoever wanted to know her whereabouts do? They would start by going to the neighbors and from there anybody could find out where she was living. And what if someone was bursting into the house in that very moment? Desperate, he raced back. He didn’t even close the door behind him when he ran up to Milagros’s room, shouting her name. She received him standing, worry reflected in her face at his scandalous entrance.

  “What—?” the gypsy started to ask.

  “Quickly! We have to …” Fray Joaquín stopped talking when he saw the Immaculate Virgin covered with a sheet. “What’s that about?” he asked, pointing to it.

  “We were talking and couldn’t come to an agreement.”

  The friar priest opened his hands in confusion. Then he shook his head. “We have to get out of here!” he urged.

  As had been happening throughout that day, Melchor once again forgot about his own worries and held his breath as did most of the thousands of people watching the bullfight. As did Martín, who stood tensely beside him, when he watched how the horse his older brother Zoilo was riding was tossed into the air by a bull. After stabbing its horns into the animal’s belly, the beast lifted it over its sturdy neck as if it were a marionette. The horse was left on the ground, kicking out its death throes in a huge puddle of blood, just like the other two the nineteenth bull of the day had killed. The picador, who had flown out of his saddle, soon became the new objective for the furious, aggressive, raging animal. Zoilo tried to get up, fell, and crawled quickly until he reached the long lance he had lost. The cheers broke out again in the arena when, standing, the gypsy faced the bull just as it charged at him. He managed to jab the lance into one of its sides. Not enough to stop the animal, but enough to get away from it. Still, t
he animal turned, and was about to sink his horns into Zoilo, who was now defenseless, when two matadors came out to distract the bull. They managed to catch its attention with their red capes, getting it to focus on their movement and forget about the gypsy.

  Martín finally released his breath. Melchor did too and, among the large audience that spring day in 1754, they applauded and cheered for Zoilo, who waved victoriously to the people before getting on another horse that his father, El Cascabelero, rushed into the ring. Melchor slapped Martín on the back.

  “He’s a Vega,” he told him.

  The young man nodded and smiled, but somewhat tiredly. It was starting to get dark and they had been at the bullfights all day. Nineteen bulls that, except for one, had been goaded six, seven and up to ten times with the lance. Eleven horses had died that day along with some dogs who were thrown to the one bull that was too docile and ended up dying in canine jaws.

  The simple folk of Madrid were enjoying the festivities: the bullfights were inaugurating the new masonry bullring that replaced the old wooden one. All the manolos and chisperos in Madrid had shown up that day, either in the stands, outside the arena, or in the field that extended from the Alcalá Gate: men and women, all happy and elegantly dressed. The French Bourbons didn’t like the bloody spectacle, so removed from the elegance and preciousness of the court at Versailles. Philip V had banned them for almost twenty-five years, but his successor, Ferdinand VI, once again allowed his subjects such entertainment, perhaps to distract them, as was the case with the comedies; perhaps for the income earned that went to charities, or perhaps for both reasons. However, in a period where reason and civility reigned, most of the noblemen, high-ranking citizens and intellectuals opposed the bullfights and called for their prohibition. In 1754, when Martín and Melchor went to the ring, there were no longer haughty noblemen who faced the bull for honor and prestige, with servants waiting in the wings to attend to them at all times. The people had made the bullfights theirs; the gentlemen were replaced by picadors who only tried to stop the animal’s charge time and again, instead of killing it, as the noblemen had, and the servants became matadors on foot who harpooned and grappled with the animal, finally ending its life with sword thrusts.

  Once he had recovered from his fear for Zoilo’s life, Melchor was plunged back into his own worries. He had spent more than three years smuggling in Barrancos, where he’d met up with Martín again. The Vega boy had made himself useful to Méndez in just a few months, as El Galeote had advised him to when the lad had had to flee Madrid. With Martín he worked all along the Portuguese border, in Gibraltar and wherever there was even the slightest possibility of making some money. Tobacco was the best merchandise, but his need for income led him to deal in all sort of products, from precious stones, fabric, tools and wine, which were brought into Spain from hand to hand, to pigs and horses that they stole and brought to Portugal on their return trip. Melchor had never worked so hard in his life and he had never, despite the coins clinking in his bag, led such an austere life as the one he decided to tolerate in order to obtain his daughter’s freedom. Martín supported Melchor’s obsession as if he were his grandson, and he made the older gypsy’s hatreds and hopes his own, although he continued to have doubts about Ana being able to fix the situation with Milagros and the Garcías. He only once dared to insinuate those doubts to Melchor.

  “Because she’s her mother!” muttered the other, ending the discussion.

  He had shown the same stubbornness when, a few months after his arrival in Barrancos, they had run into a group of gypsies in the Aracena mountains who spoke about those in Triana. Melchor hid his identity and introduced himself as a native of Trujillo, but as the conversation wore on, Martín sensed the hesitation in El Galeote’s face: he wanted to know, but he didn’t dare to ask.

  “Milagros Carmona?” one of them answered the boy. “Sure. Of course I know her. Everyone in Seville does. She sings and dances like a goddess, although now she just had a baby girl and no longer …”

  A baby girl! Vega blood, Melchor Vega’s own, united with García blood. That was the last thing that Melchor wanted to hear. They never asked again.

  On the harsh roads and mountains, Martín became a strong, handsome man, a real gypsy; a Vega who drank from El Galeote’s spirit and listened with respect, fascinated, when he told and showed him things. Only one secret seemed to come between them, between the trust and fraternity they shared as they roamed, always hidden, those inhospitable lands: the one that often disturbed Melchor’s dreams. “Sing, morena,” the young man heard him whisper in the night as he tossed and turned, while they both lay on simple blankets stretched out on the ground under the stars. The Negress whom he had gone to look for in the secret guesthouse, Martín said to himself, the one who had been sentenced to death in Triana, the one he had asked him not to talk about. He didn’t. Perhaps one day Melchor would tell him.

  Each year they had secretly returned to Madrid with the money they’d earned. Melchor ran to hand it over to the notary while Martín waited for him on Madrid’s outskirts: he didn’t want to run the risk of bumping into any of his relatives or other gypsies who might recognize him. He had argued with his father and other members of his family when he talked to them about freeing Melchor. Despite the warnings that El Galeote had given him when they parted, the boy couldn’t help bragging about his feat, with the vanity and pride of a child, before an audience whose faces shifted gradually from surprise to indignation. “Everyone will know it was you!” spat out his sister. “I told you that the other families had decided not to get involved!” added his father. “You’ve brought us certain ruin,” chimed in Zoilo. They shouted. They insulted him and finally disowned him. “Get out of this house!” ordered El Cascabelero. “Maybe that way we can save ourselves.”

  “They take years to grant pardons!” Martín tried to reassure a despairing Melchor, after they had met up beyond the Manzanares River following his second meeting with the notary. “I’ve heard of people who have been pleading for years: pardons, wages, jobs, clemency … An entire army moves around Madrid pleading, but the King is slow. There are many gypsies pleading for their family members. Don’t worry, Uncle, we will get it.”

  Melchor knew of the royal administration’s apathy. He had been in jail for four years before they decided what galley to take him to and the documents for his transfer arrived. He also knew of the requests for mercy that carried on until, years later, they were resolved one way or the other. No. That wasn’t what was worrying him; he was concerned that the notary might be cheating him. Doubt and suspicion gnawed at him every day that he denied himself a visit to a tavern or a decent bed to sleep in: was the notary just keeping that money he worked so hard to save?

  But he could never have imagined that things were going to end the way they did. He had dreamed of hearing the words: “Your daughter is free.” Although perhaps someday the notary would show him a piece of paper he couldn’t read where it would say that the King denied the pardon. Sometimes he imagined himself stabbing the man, gouging out his eyes, once his treachery was revealed. But the news of the notary’s death disconcerted him. Dead. Simply dead. He had never considered that possibility. “Fevers, from what I understand,” said the woman who now lived in what had been his office. “What would I know about his papers or the clerk who worked with him? When I rented the house it was already empty.” Melchor babbled. “Fixer?” the woman asked in surprise. “What fixer?” There was nobody there. Her husband was a pastry cook. Melchor insisted to the point of appearing naive, “And now what do I do?”

  The woman looked at him incredulously, then shrugged and closed the door.

  The gypsy asked other neighbors in the building. No one had any news for him.

  “He was definitely shady,” one old woman tried to explain. “Mysterious. Untrustworthy. Once I myself …”

  Melchor left before she had even finished her sentence. The first thing he did was head to a tavern and order wine. J
ust as when he abandoned his search for Caridad, he grieved with a cup in his hands. Madrid didn’t bring him luck. More than three years ago he had fled in search of money, and now?

  “Would you like to go to the bullfights?” he had asked Martín, to his surprise, when he heard that they were inaugurating the new ring the next day. “Your brother might be there.”

  The young man thought about it. How long had it been since he’d seen any member of his family? In the arena he would be hidden among the crowd; they wouldn’t recognize him, so he accepted the invitation. They retraced their steps with the setting sun at their backs. Melchor tried to put his arm around Martín’s shoulders, but he was already taller than him. He looked at the young man: strong, tough … Perhaps Martín was the only one he could still rely on.

  They didn’t even look for a place to spend the night. They stretched out their dinner of slices of bread, toast soaked in water, fried with lard and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon; chicken stewed in a sauce made of its own crushed liver; almond biscuits and doughnuts for dessert, vast quantities of wine and, once they’d had their fill, they spent the last few hours of the night asleep under the stars.

  THE BULLFIGHT ended and the people continued the festivities on the field that surrounded the arena. Thousands of them, dressed in typical Spanish style, sang and danced their traditional dances, shrieked and laughed, bet and gambled; they drank and fought, some with canes and others with sticks. In the pell mell and noise, Melchor kept spending his money. “There’s nothing to be done,” he had told Martín during the bullfight. Then he explained it to him. No, he didn’t know the fixer, he answered the boy. He had never known who he was … if he ever existed.

  “And what if they recognize us?” asked Martín as Melchor bragged about his money and ordered more wine. “There could be Garcías around here.”

  Melchor turned slowly and responded with a calm that seemed to silence the din that surrounded them. “Boy, I have spent enough time with you to be sure that, if it comes to pass, I won’t have to come to your aid. Let all the Garcías in Madrid and in Triana come at us together. You and I will deal with them.”