The Barefoot Queen (18 page)

Melchor approached the wounded man and stepped on his already bleeding wrist. She’s mine!” he announced in a loud voice. “Anyone else planning on imagining her in his arms?”

The gypsy ran narrowed eyes over the scene. Nobody answered. Then he released the pressure of his foot, while Tomás kicked the backpacker’s knife out of his reach. After a sign from Melchor, the nephews stopped menacing the other smugglers and they all disappeared as one into the crowd. Caridad felt her knees grow weak; she was still terrified but above all confused: Melchor had fought for her!

A few paces past where the altercation had taken place, Bernardo returned the musket to his companion. “So many years in the galleys,” he commented then, “so many years struggling to stay alive, watching so many fall by our side, on our very benches, after unbearable agony, and you risk your life for a Negress. And don’t tell me she sings well!” he said, anticipating his response. “I haven’t heard her yet.”

Melchor smiled at his friend.

“Can she outdo you?” asked Bernardo then. “Does she sing better than you?”

They both were lost in their memories, of when Melchor, as they rowed out at sea in the silence of a calm wind, started an interminable gloomy wailing lament as if pulled from the spirits of all those unfortunates who had died in the galleys. Even the slave driver stopped whipping the rowers then. And Melchor sang without words, modulating his cry and intoning the lament of men destined to die and adding their souls to the many left chained to the oars and the timbers of the galley forever.

“Better than me?” wondered the gypsy aloud after a pause. “I don’t know, Bernardo. What I can tell you is she sings with the same pain.”

THE TOWER
built on Chullera Point for coastal observation and defense was used, as on so many other occasions, as an improvised lighthouse to guide the smugglers’ ships through the night from Gibraltar. The lookout on the watchtower, more concerned with tending the garden that surrounded it, was pleased to get the money the smugglers paid him, as were the local magistrates, corporals and justices of the nearby towns and garrisons.

And while a man waved a lantern from the top of the tower, at his feet, on the beach, the hundred smugglers who had come from Gaucín with their horses waited in the darkness of the night for the boats to arrive. They had spent two days at the inn, playing, singing, drinking and fighting as they waited for news from Gibraltar, but on the beach most of them were scanning the black horizon, because while they could act with impunity on land, it wasn’t the same at sea, with the Spanish coastguard ships controlling the shoreline. The most delicate moment of the operation had arrived and they all knew it.

Caridad, among whispers and the occasional whinny from the horses, heard the murmur of the waves breaking on the shore and repeated the gypsy’s instructions to herself over and over: “Some
faluchos
will show up,” he had told her, “perhaps, for this amount of people, even a xebec …”

“Faluchos?”
she’d asked.

“Ships,” Melchor had clarified brusquely, nervous. She didn’t dare ask anything more and kept listening. “They will unload leather bags filled with tobacco onto the beach. Eight are ours, two per horse. The problem is that each vessel will unload many more, so we have to divide them up on the beach. That’s where you come in,
morena.
I want you to choose the highest quality ones. Did you understand me?”

“Yes,” she answered, although she wasn’t very sure. How long would she have to smell and feel the leaves? “How much time will I have …” she started to ask. One of the gypsies’ horses launched a kick at another who was nibbling on his rump.

“Boy!” muttered Melchor. “Deal with the animals!”

Caridad stopped paying attention to the horses when his nephews separated them.

“Were you saying something,
morena
?”

She didn’t hear him. And how was she going to check the color and the different tones on the leaves? It was pitch black; you couldn’t see a thing. Besides, there were all those men waiting impatiently beside them. Caridad sensed the pent-up tension on the beach. Would they give her enough time to choose the tobacco? She knew she was able to recognize the best plants. Don José always called her over to do it, and then even the master remained silent during the time it took, while she, now the lady of the plantation, savored the aromas, textures and colors.

“Melchor …” She tried to clear up her doubts.

“Let’s go!” he interrupted.

The order caught her off guard.

“Get going,
morena
!” urged the gypsy.

Caridad followed them.

One of the nephews stayed behind, guarding the animals, just as one in each of the other groups did. Only the men went down to the shore, since it was so chaotic that the horses would get frightened, kicking each other and squandering the goods.

Suddenly, many lanterns were lit along the beach. No one was being cautious any longer; the lights could betray them to any coastguard boat in the area. They just had to hurry. In the footsteps of the gypsies, surrounded by smugglers, Caridad made out several boats around which crowded the most diligent. She stopped a few steps from the shore, beside Melchor, amid shouts and splashing. Bernardo moved quickly in search of his merchandise. He called them, waving a lantern, and they all headed over to where they were piling up the leather bags unloaded from one of the several boats that had come close to the beach.

“Get started,
morena
!” urged Melchor as he pushed aside several smugglers and cut the cords that bound one of the sacks with his knife. “What are you waiting for?” he shouted after he had cut the cords off the next one and Caridad still hadn’t moved.

Protected by Tomás and the three remaining nephews, who tried to keep the others from making off with the tobacco before Caridad could check the merchandise, she tried to get close to the first bag. She couldn’t see. The shouting distracted her and the pushing was annoying. She still managed to introduce a hand into the first leather sack. She was hoping to get to feel the leaves, pick up one of them and … It was Brazil tobacco! She had first encountered it in Triana, although she had heard about it
before that. Rope tobacco: black Brazilian tobacco leaves wrapped in big rolls. Caridad smelled the cloying sweet treacle syrup used to treat the leaves so they could be rolled. The Spaniards liked it: they ground up the rolls and wrapped another leaf around it. It could also be chewed, but it didn’t compare to good tobacco …

“Negress!” This time it was Tomás who called her attention, his back up against hers, to withstand the pushing of the other men. “Hurry it up or one of these men is going to mistake you for a leather bag and load you onto one of the horses.”

Then Caridad cast aside that first sack and a couple of smugglers pounced on it. In the lantern light and confusion, the Vega nephews looked at their Uncle Tomás in surprise. He shrugged. Brazil tobacco, the most sought-after smoking tobacco on the market!

After looking through a couple more sacks, Caridad found leaves. They weren’t Cuban, it was Virginia tobacco. It pained her to rip the leaves roughly, but Tomás and Melchor were constantly rushing her while Bernardo tried to calm the agent who had unloaded them. She rejected the ones that seemed too dry or too damp; she quickly sniffed them, trying to calculate how long ago they’d been harvested, she held them up to the faint light to check their color, and she began to choose: one, two, three … And the nephews took them aside.

“No!” she corrected. “Not this one, that one.”

“For crying out loud!” one of them shouted at her. “Make up your mind!”

Caridad felt tears come to her eyes. She hesitated. Which was the last one she had chosen?

“Morena!”
Melchor shook her, but she couldn’t remember.

“That one!” she pointed without being sure, her eyes flooded with tears.

Some distance away, on a dune, while his men had taken care of the contraband that belonged to them, El Gordo and his two lieutenants watched with interest the huge commotion the gypsies had started. Caridad continued with her selection, crushing the tobacco leaves, barely knowing which bag they had come out of. The nephews set aside the ones she pointed to and the other smugglers made off with the rejected sacks. Melchor and Tomás hurried Caridad, and Bernardo argued with the agent
who was wildly pointing to the other ships already leaving the beach, all eyes on the horizon, looking out for the lights of a coastguard vessel.

Finally, the gypsies managed to gather their eight leather bags. The agent and Bernardo shook hands and the agent ran toward a boat that was already starting to row toward the
faluchos.
The ruckus continued over the tobacco Caridad had discarded. That was when El Gordo squinted his eyes. Each bag could weigh more than a hundred pounds and there were only six men: five gypsies and Bernardo. He looked toward where the other gypsy was waiting for them with the horses. They had to cover a good stretch of beach, each of them with a bag; they couldn’t carry any more. Then he turned to his lieutenants, who understood him without the need for a single word.

“Wait here,
morena,
” ordered Melchor while he threw one of the bags onto his back with difficulty and joined the line headed by Tomás, each with his own bundle.

Caridad was sobbing, terrified. Her body was drenched in sweat and the red of her dress showed through her open cape. Her legs trembled and she still clenched pieces of tobacco leaf in her hands. El Gordo watched as the line of gypsies set off, then he shifted his gaze to his lieutenants: one of them, with the help of two other smugglers, drove an unloaded horse on through the water, behind Caridad’s back; the other walked over to her.

“Distract her,” El Gordo had ordered him. “You don’t have to hurt her,” he added at the man’s surprised expression.

However, seeing how his henchman drew closer to Caridad, the lanterns gradually going out as the parties left the beach with their goods, he understood that if the woman realized the trick and put up a fight, his caution would have been in vain. When the smuggler was only a few steps away from Caridad, El Gordo again calculated the timing: the gypsies hadn’t yet reached their horses. He smiled. He was about to let out a laugh: they advanced slowly, as erect as they could walk beneath the bags, haughty and proud as if they were strolling down the main street of a town. The men who were driving the horse through the water had already disappeared into the darkness, so they must be very close to the bundles. They had little time, but he was already rubbing his thick hands together: he sensed it was going to be easy.

“Negress!”

Caridad jumped. The smuggler who had shouted did as well: her breasts, large and firm, struggled to burst through her red shirt with each labored exhalation of breath. The man forgot the speech he’d prepared, absorbed in the sight of her and his sudden desire for those voluptuous curves. Caridad lowered her gaze and her submissive attitude inflamed the man’s passions. Beneath the increasingly dim light, the woman shone from the sweat that ran down her body.

“Come with me!” the smuggler proposed naively. “I’ll give you … I’ll give you whatever you want.”

Caridad didn’t answer and, all of a sudden, the smuggler saw how his companion, who had already arrived, was waving wildly with open hands, incredulous at what he had just overheard. El Gordo shifted restlessly on the dune and turned toward the gypsies: they were already loading up the horses, but it was unlikely they could see Caridad from where they were. The one behind the woman waved his hand, wanting nothing to do with it, and picked up one of the leather bags. Caridad noticed and was about to turn around, but then the lieutenant reacted and pounced on her, immobilizing her with a hand on the nape of her neck and bringing the other to her inner thigh. For a moment he was surprised that she didn’t scream or defend herself. She only wanted to turn toward the tobacco. He didn’t let her and bit her lips. They both fell onto the sand.

El Gordo made sure the other lieutenant and the men he had with him were quickly loading the leather bags onto the horse and disappearing into the darkness. The first shouts were heard from the gypsies. Only one of his men remained … 
Good-for-nothing!
he thought. If the gypsies caught him, they would know that he was behind the theft, and he didn’t want that. He was relieved to see that the lieutenant reappeared in the night and grabbed the man by his hair, almost lifting him off the ground, and separated him from the woman. They escaped shortly before Melchor and his men got to Caridad. It was unlikely that they had recognized them.

“You’re old, Galeote,” murmured El Gordo before turning his back to the sea and disappearing into the night as well, trying mockingly to imitate the gypsies’ gait.