The Barefoot Queen (39 page)

Both groups exchanged glances.

“Let’s go,” the other two women urged the healer. “This is dangerous.”

Chased by a string of obscenities from the mulatto and the whore’s peals of laughter, they rushed toward Triana.

Once they had left the Carthusian monastery far behind, the three women crossed the outskirts slowly. On their way to the church of Nuestra Señora de la O, their distress over seeing their humble homes turned into a refuge for outlaws began to transform into consternation: the Vegas would never have allowed it. Once they were freed they would have kicked all those undesirables out of there. Old María became ever more pessimistic; Milagros, who didn’t dare to say aloud what they both were
fearing, clung to the possibility that her family was waiting for her in the alley; her father was a Carmona and didn’t live in the settlement, but if they hadn’t freed the Vegas …

That cold November night—colder, it seemed to the three women, than any of the preceding nights—was upon them. The San Miguel alley greeted them with an inhospitable silence; only the faint gleam of some candles behind the windows, here and there, spoke of a human presence. Old María shook her head. Milagros escaped the group and ran toward her house. The well in the courtyard, always hidden behind twisted, rusty iron pieces, greeted her now like a lonely, proud beacon. The girl stared at it for a long time before going upstairs.

Shortly after, Caridad and María found her prostrate on the ground: she hadn’t dared to take even a single step inside the house, as if the completely empty space had hit her and knocked her down right there. She trembled in rhythm to her sobs and covered her face tightly with her hands, terrified of facing the reality.

Caridad knelt by her side and whispered in her ear. “Don’t worry, it will all work itself out. You’ll see how they’ll come home soon.”

THE HAMMERING
on the anvils woke them up; the sun had already risen. After María managed to calm Milagros down and stop her going to other homes that might be occupied by delinquents, they had all three slept together, with Milagros crying every so often, covered with a blanket and the tent fabric that Santiago had given them for their journey. The sunlight insulted them by revealing the place without a stick of furniture; only some broken plates on the dust-covered floor testified to the fact that a family had once lived there. Still lying down, the three women stopped to listen to the tapping of the hammers: it was nothing like the frenzy of the smiths they were used to; these were scarce and slow, one might even say weary.

Despite her knotted fingers, Old María surprised them with a hard, loud clap. “We’ve got things to do!” she exclaimed, taking the initiative and getting up.

Caridad followed suit, but Milagros pulled up the tent fabric and covered her head.

“Didn’t you hear, girl?” said the old woman. “If they are working with iron, they must be gypsies. No
payo
would dare to do that here, in the alley. Get up.”

María indicated to Caridad with a look that she should uncover the girl. She took a few seconds to obey, but finally pulled off the fabric and the blanket to reveal Milagros in a fetal position.

“Your parents could be in another house,” continued the healer without much conviction. “They could have their pick, and here”—she turned and waved her hand over the place—“they don’t even have a damn chair.”

Milagros sat up with her eyes bloodshot and her face flushed.

“And if they aren’t,” continued María, “we have to find out what is going on and how we can help them.”

THE HAMMERING
came from the Carmona smithy, which they reached from the same courtyard all the apartments shared. Inside, the effect of the seizure of assets during the roundup was clear: the tools, the anvils and the forges, the cauldrons, the basins for tempering … all had disappeared. Two young men were on their knees, working on the forge; they hadn’t noticed the women. Milagros noticed that they used a portable forge like the one carried by Domingo, the gypsy from Puerto de Santa María they had come across in the Andévalo: one of them was banging a horseshoe on a tiny anvil and the other used a ram-skin bellows to fan the incandescent coal that glimmered in a simple hole cut into the ground.

The girl recognized them, as did the old woman. They looked familiar to Caridad. They were Carmonas. Milagros’s cousins. Their names were Doroteo and Ángel but they had changed. They worked the iron with bare torsos that showed their ribs and their cheekbones jutted out of their wasted faces. The women didn’t need to announce their presence. Doroteo, the one who was hammering on the anvil, missed the mark, cursed, leapt up and dropped the hammer.

“It’s impossible to work with this …!”

He stopped mid-sentence when he saw them. Ángel turned his head toward where his cousin was looking. María was about to say something, but Milagros beat her to it.

“What do you know about my parents?”

Ángel put down the bellows and stood up as well. “Uncle didn’t get out,” he answered. “He’s still being held at La Carraca.”

“How is he? Did you see him?”

The young man didn’t want to answer.

“And my mother?” asked Milagros in a thin voice.

“We haven’t seen her. She isn’t around here.”

“But if they haven’t freed Uncle, they won’t have freed her either,” added the other.

Milagros felt herself fainting. She turned pale and her legs shook.

“Help her,” María ordered Caridad. “And your parents,” she added after making sure that Caridad was holding up Milagros before she collapsed, “are they free? Where are they?” she asked when they nodded.

“The elders,” responded Doroteo, “are negotiating with Seville’s chief justice officer to get back what they took from us. We’ve only been able to get this”—the young man looked indignantly at the small anvil—“useless portable anvil. The King has ordered that they return our goods to us, but those who bought them don’t want to do it without getting back the money they paid for them. We don’t have any money, and neither the King nor the chief justice officer wants to contribute.”

“And the women?”

“All those who aren’t at the town hall went to Seville at dawn, to beg for alms, work or to get food. We have nothing. We are the only Carmonas here. This thing”—he pointed at the anvil again halfheartedly, “only lets two people work. In other workshops they have also managed to get some old forges like the ones the traveling smiths use, but we need more iron and coal … and to work out how to use them.”

At that moment, as if the other had reminded him, Ángel knelt down again and blew on the coal, which launched a cloud of smoke into his face. Then he picked up the horseshoe that Doroteo had been working on, now cold, and stuck it among the embers again.

“Why didn’t they free them?” The question emerged from Milagros’s still pale lips as she escaped Caridad’s arms and walked haltingly toward her cousin. Doroteo didn’t beat around the bush.

“Cousin, your parents aren’t married according to the Catholic rites, you know. That is an essential requirement for release. It seems your mother never allowed it …” he said, clearly angry. “I don’t know of any
Vega from the settlement who has been freed. Besides the church wedding, they ask for witnesses to declare that they didn’t live like gypsies …”

“Don’t repudiate our race, boy,” the healer warned him then.

Doroteo didn’t dare answer; instead he extended his hands as silence overtook them.

“Doroteo,” interjected Ángel, breaking that silence. “We’re out of coal.”

The gypsy shook one hand in a gesture that demonstrated both his desire to work and his sense of helplessness at the situation; he turned his back on them, searched for the hammer and made as if to kneel beside the anvil.

“Do you know anything about Grandfather Vega, about Melchor?” asked the old woman.

“No,” he answered. “I’m sorry,” he added to the women standing before him anxious for some good news.

They went out into the alley through the door to the workshop. Just as Doroteo had told them, intermittent, faint hammer blows echoed in other smithies; otherwise, the place was deserted.

“Let’s go and see Fray Joaquín,” suggested Milagros.

“Girl!”

“Why not?” she insisted, walking toward the exit. “He’ll have forgotten all about that crazy idea.” She stopped; the old woman refused to follow her. “María, he is a good man. He will help us. He did before …”

She looked to Caridad for help, but the Negress was absorbed in her own thoughts.

“We have nothing to lose by trying,” added Milagros.

It reassured her that people weren’t surprised by her presence; they knew that the gypsies had returned. In San Jacinto, however, Milagros and Caridad’s hopes were thwarted again. Fray Joaquín, the doorman informed them, was no longer in Triana. He didn’t seem willing to give them much more information, but Milagros, who even went so far as to tug on his habit, got the brother to reluctantly tell them something more, mostly to get rid of them.

“He left Triana,” he told them. “He suddenly went crazy,” he confessed with a wave of his hand. He thought for a few seconds and decided to explain further. “I could see it coming,” he burst out, with obvious presumption. “I told the prior on several occasions: that young man is going
to bring us problems. The tobacco, his friendships, his comings and goings, his insolence and those sermons of his … so irreverent! So modern! He wanted to hang up his habits. The prior convinced him not to. I don’t know why the prior liked that boy that much.” Then he lowered his voice. “They say he knew Fray Joaquín’s mother quite well; some say too well. Fray Joaquín claimed that there was nothing to keep him here any longer, in Triana! What about his community? And his vocation? And God? Nothing to keep him here …” he repeated with a snort. The brother interrupted his harangue, closed his eyes and shook his head, bewildered, angry at himself when he realized that he was explaining to two gypsies and a Negro woman, who listened in astonishment.

“Where did he go?” inquired Milagros.

He didn’t want to tell her. He refused to continue talking to them.

They returned downcast to the alley, Caridad bringing up the rear, her eyes on the ground.

“Oh, so he forgot about that crazy idea, huh?” said María sarcastically on the way.

“Maybe it wasn’t about—” Milagros started to retort.

“Don’t be naive, girl.”

They continued walking in silence. Except for the two coins that Santiago had given them, they had no money. They had no food either. They had no relatives! There wasn’t a single Vega in Triana, according to Doroteo. The old healer couldn’t hold back a sigh.

“Let’s buy something to eat and go and collect some herbs,” she then announced.

“And where will we prepare them?” asked Milagros sarcastically. “In your—?”

“Shut up!” interrupted the old woman. “You have no right to question me. We’re all having a hard time. When someone gets sick, they’ll be running to find a place to prepare them.”

Milagros shrank back at the reprimand. They were walking toward La Cava, where the rubbish was piling up. María looked at the girl out of the corner of her eye and, when she heard her first sob, made a gesture to Caridad to console her, but Milagros quickened her step and left them behind, as if fleeing.

Caridad didn’t catch Old María’s look. Her thoughts were still on Melchor.
I’ll find him in Triana,
she had repeated to herself over and over
again during the journey back. She imagined meeting him again, singing for him again, his presence … his touch. If he had been arrested, as they had assumed so many times over the course of their flight, they would have freed him like the others, and if he hadn’t been arrested, why wouldn’t he come to Triana as soon as he found out that his people had been freed? But he wasn’t there, and the young Carmona men assured them that no Vega had left the arsenal. A thousand times that very morning her stomach had turned at the image of those gaunt faces and scrawny torsos on Milagros’s cousins. If that was the toll on young men, what would Melchor be like? She felt her eyes grow damp.

“Go with her,” asked the healer, pointing to Milagros.

Caridad tried to hide her face.

“You too?” asked María with desperation.

Caridad sniffled and tried to hold back her tears.

“Why are you crying,
morena
?”

Caridad didn’t answer.

“If it were about Milagros you would already be with her. I doubt that José Carmona treated you kindly even once, and as for Ana Vega …” María stopped suddenly, tensed her old neck and looked at her in astonishment. “Melchor?”

Caridad couldn’t hold it back any longer and she burst into tears.

“Melchor!” exclaimed Old María incredulously as she shook her head.
“Morena!”
she finally called out. Caridad made an effort to look at her. “Melchor is an old gypsy. A Vega. You’ll see him again.” A smile flickered over Caridad’s mouth. “But now she is the one who needs you,” insisted the healer, turning to point at Milagros as she headed off.

“I’ll see him again? Are you sure?” Caridad managed to babble.

“With other gypsies I wouldn’t dare to predict, but with Melchor, yes: you will see him again.”

Caridad closed her eyes; satisfaction was already invading her features.

“Go on, run after her!” urged the old woman.

Caridad gave a start, rushed ahead, reached her friend and draped an arm over her shoulders.

NO ONE
consoled Fray Joaquín on the unpleasant morning when he left Triana, shortly before Milagros and her companions returned to the settlement.
He carried in his bag the official letter issued by the Archbishop of Seville; Fray Pedro de Salce, the famous preacher, walked by his side singing litanies to the Virgin, as he always did when he went out on missions. He was accompanied in his prayers by two lay brothers who each led mules loaded down with chasubles, crosses, books, torches and other objects needed for their evangelizing.

Some of the walkers they passed fell to their knees and crossed themselves as Fray Pedro blessed them without stopping, others matched their rhythm to that of the religious men and prayed with them.