The Barefoot Queen (35 page)

“If I didn’t die in service to the son-of-a-bitch King,” he said aloud to himself, addressing some place far beyond the town in front of him, “what better way to do it now that I’m nothing more than a shell? This way I’ll silence all those who would compare me to a woman.”

AS HE
’
D
suspected he heard them long before they were visible, on the road leaving Encinasola in the late afternoon. A long and chaotic column of men: some on horseback; most leading horses, mules and donkeys by their halters. Among them were many simple backpackers. Shouts, insults and laughter accompanied them, but the rejoicing in Melchor’s eyes ceased as soon as he recognized El Gordo, flanked by his lieutenants, leading them. Morena, he then thought with a half-smile on his lips,
what a mess you’ve gotten me into.
The murmur of Caridad’s mournful, monotone singing filled Melchor’s mind, driving out all other sounds. The gypsy, with his eyes locked on the approaching column, widened his smile.

“The only thing I’m regretting is that I’m going to die without having tasted your body,
morena,
” he said out loud. “I’m sure we would have made a good couple: an old galley slave and the blackest woman in the Spanish empire.”

El Gordo and his men soon reached him but were slower to recognize him because the sun was in their eyes. The column of men crowded together behind their captain when he and his lieutenants halted suddenly in their saddles.

Melchor and El Gordo challenged each other with their eyes. The
lieutenants, after their initial surprise, looked at their surroundings—trees and thickets, stones and uneven ground—to see if it was an ambush. Melchor saw how uneasy they were. He hadn’t thought about that possibility: they thought he wasn’t alone.

“El Galeote …” The murmur ran through the rows of smugglers. “El Galeote’s here,” they whispered to each other.

“So you’ve come out of your hidey-hole?” asked El Gordo.

“I’ve come to kill you.”

A low sound rose through the smugglers until El Gordo let out a laugh that silenced them.

“You alone?”

Melchor didn’t answer. He didn’t even move.

“I could finish you off without even dismounting,” El Gordo threatened him.

The gypsy let a few seconds slip away. He hadn’t done it. He hadn’t shot him. El Gordo was hesitating; the others were, too.

“Just you and I, Gordo,” said Melchor after a pause. “We have nothing against the others,” he added, pointing to the other two.

The use of the plural forced the lieutenants to look around the area again; the scamper of some animal running off, the whisper of the wind amid the foliage: the slightest noise attracted their attention, just as El Gordo’s eye was drawn to the simple flutter of a little bird. There could be gypsies hiding, aiming their guns at him. He knew about the massive roundup but he also knew that many from the settlement had managed to escape, and that most of them were from the Vega family, who were loyal to the death when it came to their blood. All it would take was one of them aiming at his head right then! El Galeote couldn’t have come alone to challenge an entire party of men, he wasn’t that crazy. Where could they be? Among the branches of the trees? Lying behind some rock?

Melchor took advantage of that moment of indecision and got up from the stump. His muscles responded as if the risk, the proximity of the fight and its uncertain outcome had injected them with a strange vitality.

“You can run away, Gordo,” he shouted so that everyone would hear him. “You can spur your horse on and maybe … maybe you’ll get lucky. Do you want to try it, you disgusting sack of blubber?” he yelled again.

Only the brushing of the men’s restless feet on the dirt road and the snort of a horse broke the silence that followed his insult.

“I came here to kill you, son of a bitch. You and I alone.” The gypsy pulled his knife out of his sash and opened it slowly, until the shining blade emerged from its bone handle. “Nobody else has to get hurt. I came here to die!” howled Melchor with the open knife in his hand. “But there will be consequences for many of you if I die any way other than hand-to-hand with your captain. Isn’t that the best way to solve problems?”

Among the few murmurs of agreement behind him, El Gordo noticed that his two lieutenants weren’t reining in their horses enough; they were now a significant distance away from him.

Melchor, standing firmly a few paces from his horse, the faded yellow of his jacket revived by the sun that shone behind his back, noticed it as well. “Are you thinking about running away like a scared woman?” he challenged him.

If he tried that, he would lose the respect of his men and with it all possibility of leading a party ever again, and El Gordo knew it. He exhaled a long, weary snort, spat at the gypsy’s feet and dismounted with difficulty.

He hadn’t even touched the ground when the men broke out into cheers and started placing bets. The lieutenants moved to one side of the road. The others tried to place themselves in a circle around the contenders, but Melchor didn’t allow it; he had to maintain the pretense of an ambush. If the men surrounded El Gordo … Melchor stepped back a few paces with his hand extended, indicating to the approaching crowd that they should stop.

“Gordo!” he shouted when the first few obeyed him. “Before your men can surround us, someone will blow your head off! Do you understand? Everyone behind you, on the road … Now!”

The smuggler made an authoritative gesture to his lieutenants, who made sure the others stayed on the road. Many of them mounted the animals they had been leading by the halter, for a better view. These in the last few rows shouted for those in front to sit down, and then, in a sort of crescent moon that extended beyond the road as their amphitheater, they applauded and cheered on their captain when he opened up a large knife and pointed it at the gypsy. Some peasants and their women, on their way back from town, watched in amazement from a distance.

The two contenders sized each other up, moving in a circle, arms and
knives extended, trying to keep the sun out of their eyes. El Gordo moved with surprising agility, observed Melchor. He shouldn’t underestimate him. He wouldn’t be the captain of a party of smugglers from Cuevas Bajas if he didn’t know how to fight and defend his position day after day. These thoughts were running through his mind when El Gordo pounced on him and launched a stab at his liver, which Melchor avoided but not easily. He stumbled as he moved away from the attack.

“You’re old, Galeote,” El Gordo said as Melchor tried to regain his balance and the shouts and applause from the crowd died down. “Didn’t you just compare me to a woman who wanted to run away? Have you fought with them so much that you’ve forgotten how real men do it?”

The smugglers’ laughter at their captain’s words infuriated the gypsy, but he knew he shouldn’t get carried away with his rage. He frowned and continued moving around the other, testing him with his weapon.

“The last woman I fought with,” he lied as he prepared himself for the next attack, which was surely coming, “was the whore I paid with your wife’s medallion. Do you remember it, you sack of fat? I fucked her on your account, thinking about your wife and daughters!”

His answer, as Melchor expected, was quick in coming. El Gordo paid more attention to the tense silence of his men than to prudence and he launched his knife, cutting through the air. Melchor swerved, went around him and wounded him with a gash at chest height that turned his white shirt the color of the red sash around his enormous belly.

I’ve got him!
the gypsy said to himself when he saw how El Gordo turned, with his face flushed and blood flowing from his chest, stabbing at the air. Melchor dodged his blind attacks once, two, three times. He wounded him again, on his left thigh, and then he let out a guffaw that broke the silence the smugglers maintained.

“And your wife’s pearls …” The gypsy jumped from one side to the other, confusing his enemy even further. He felt young and strangely agile. He dodged a new attack and jammed his knife into El Gordo’s right armpit, forcing him to take the knife with his left hand. “My granddaughter is flaunting them, you filthy dog!” shouted Melchor after moving several paces away from him.

“I’ll kill her when I’m done with you,” answered the other, refusing to give up, “but first I’ll give her to my men to enjoy. Did you bring her with you?” he added, pointing with his knife past the road, toward the trees.

Melchor decided to finish him off, grabbed his weapon tightly and approached his opponent ready to deal the final blow.

“When we’re done with her she’ll wish she’d been arrested last month in Triana along with all the other gypsy riffraff …”

El Gordo didn’t finish his sentence. The decisiveness with which Melchor approached him faded at his words. The smuggler sensed the confusion in the gypsy’s face; his arms and legs were paralyzed. He didn’t know about it! He hadn’t heard about the roundup! El Gordo took advantage of his opponent’s hesitation, moved quickly and sunk the entire length of his knife into his belly.

Melchor, with surprise in his face, leaned forward, brought his free hand to his wound and stepped back a few paces.

“There are no gypsies!” screamed El Gordo excitedly amid the cheers and applause of his people after his stab. “He’s alone!”

“He’s all yours!” encouraged one of his lieutenants. “Finish him off!”

The shouting was deafening.

Bloodied, with his right hand hanging by his side, the smuggler pounced on Melchor, who, in his attempt to avoid the attack, tripped and fell to the ground, onto his back. The men, no longer afraid of an ambush, got up and started to run toward where El Gordo was standing above Melchor. The smuggler’s cynical grin was back. Many of his men could see how the gypsy was curled up and grabbing his stomach with both hands, submissive; others, however, could only manage to make out the fleeting trace of two large dogs that appeared out of nowhere and sprang on the captain. One leapt on his thigh, where he was bleeding from the wound Melchor had given him; the other went straight for his neck when El Gordo fell from the first dog’s attack.

Most of the men were frozen in place; some tried to approach the dogs, but stopped when the animals growled without releasing their prey. El Gordo was still close to Melchor. He was as motionless as the two huge dogs, bred to fight mountain wolves; both had their powerful jaws clenched just enough, as if they were waiting for the definitive order to sink their fangs into the smuggler’s flesh.

“Shoot them!” suggested someone.

Without daring to speak, El Gordo managed to frantically gesture in the negative with one hand, from beneath the animal that was clamped onto his thigh.

“You could wound El Fajado!” one of his lieutenants objected at the same time. “Nobody shoot, or even go near.”

“Bite,” Melchor struggled to mutter. The dogs didn’t obey but they greeted his voice with a wagging of their tails that the gypsy couldn’t see. “Bite, goddamnit!” he managed to howl in a cry of pain.

“They won’t do it.”

The smugglers turned toward Nicolasa, who had appeared on the edge of the road with her late husband’s gun in her hands.

“They won’t do it … unless I order them to.”

Her voice trembled as she spoke. The pain she had felt in her own stomach when she saw the smuggler sink his knife into Melchor’s had now transformed into a tremendous knot. She had set the dogs on El Gordo as soon as she saw Melchor fall to the ground and she understood that his die was cast. Then she went out to the road, blind, determined to fight for the gypsy, but suddenly she found herself surrounded by rough, grim-faced men, all enormous compared to her.

“If it’s the woman who has to give the order … let’s kill her!” proposed one of the smugglers, making a move to leap on Nicolasa.

The shot thundered and the man went flying backward, his face destroyed by the blunderbuss’s pellets.

Nicolasa didn’t dare to look at the others. She had shot the way she did when wolves came close to the shack: without thinking. She had never shot a man before, as much as she threatened it when anyone came close to her territory. The dogs’ growling brought her back to reality. El Gordo was again frenetically beating his free hand against the road. She reloaded her weapon, trying to control the trembling in her hands, keeping one eye on the men who surrounded her.

“Nobody do a thing,” one of the lieutenants again ordered.

Nicolasa breathed hard as she tamped the barrel of the blunderbuss for the second and last time with the ramrod. Then she began to place the fine gunpowder in the weapon’s flash pan. They were all watching her closely … her and the dogs. She cleared her throat.

“If anyone tries to hurt me …” She cleared her throat again; she was having trouble speaking. “The dogs will come to my aid, but first they will finish off that wretch just as they do with wolves. They never leave an enemy alive.” She checked the gun, nodded and took it up again. Some of the men moved away and she felt strong. “A single squeeze of that jaw
and your captain will die,” she added, addressing the place where Melchor lay. Then she lifted her gaze toward one of the lieutenants, still on his horse, and found a face that seemed to encourage her. What was that she saw reflected in his eyes? Ambition! “Or perhaps you’d like him to die?” she speculated in a lower voice, directly to the lieutenant. “What are you going to do with a cowardly, obese captain who only has the use of one hand? I saw the fight. That wound in his armpit isn’t going to heal.”

The lieutenant brought a hand to his chin, thought for a few seconds, grabbed his weapon tightly and nodded.

Nicolasa sketched a half-smile as she realized she was going to make it out of that sticky situation alive.

“What …?” the second lieutenant tried to object when a sudden shot from the other silenced his complaints and took him off his horse with a bullet to the chest.

A murmur ran through the men, but none of them raised their voices: it was between the leaders, as they had seen many times before.

“You and you”—the woman addressed two nearby smugglers and then pointed to Melchor—“load him up …” She gasped for breath when she saw the gypsy’s hands, soaked in blood and tense against his stomach. “Load him on a horse!” she managed to finish.