The Barefoot Queen (48 page)

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 showing 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 in 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.

The music began with liturgical hymns: music and songs in the Italian style that, since the arrival of the Bourbons to the Spanish throne, sought more to please the parishioners than to inspire them to spiritual passion as composers had done before with their use of counterpoint; reason versus ear, that was the fashionable discussion among the choirmasters of the large cathedrals. Milagros found the serenity she needed in the light melody. Standing still beside the musicians, it was as if they were speaking to her before anyone else; their notes reached her ears clearly, free of whispers, noises or murmurs. She closed her eyes, and let herself be
carried away by the marvelous polyphony of voices from the boys’ choir until she was wrapped in a musical delirium of which, for the first time in a long while, she wasn’t the protagonist.

Then, suddenly, the marvelous choir that filled the church stopped singing and gave way to the words of the officiants. When Milagros heard the voice—supposedly gentle but actually gruff—she opened her eyes, which were damp with tears she hadn’t even felt well up. She looked around her. Her vision was blurred but she did nothing about it, as if she wanted to extend the moment she had just experienced. Then she sensed his presence; she sensed it just as a few moments earlier she had vibrated to the sound of the violins. Although her eyes kept showing her a blurry spot between Rafael and Inocencio, she knew it was he. Finally she wiped them with her forearm and there he was: her father’s smile lessened the effect of his emaciated appearance, the dried wound that crossed one of his cheeks to his forehead, his swollen black eye and the improvised, absurd clothes it was clear he had been lent to wear to the church. Milagros wanted to run to him, but he stopped her with a gesture.
Sing,
he mouthed.
And Mother?
she mouthed back to him. His expression froze her blood. Suddenly Milagros realized: the choirmaster was looking at her incredulously, as were those in the chapel and even the priests in front of the high altar; the singers.… The entire church was staring at her! She hadn’t come in when she should have. She trembled.

“Sing, my girl,” encouraged her father before the people’s whispering broke the silence.

Milagros, spellbound by the immense, enveloping love she felt in those three little words, took a step forward. The choirmaster signaled for the musicians to begin again. The first note came out of the gypsy girl’s throat cracked and timid. The second swelled when she heard her father’s sobs as he listened to that voice he thought he’d never hear again. She sang to the newborn child. When the choirboys launched into the chorus she had a chance to run her eyes over the faithful and she could tell they were captivated. Later, when the choir stopped, she extended her hands and straightened up as if she wanted her voice to come from the very ribs of the arches of Santa Ana’s vaulted ceiling to continue singing the miracle of Jesus’s birth.