The Barefoot Queen (81 page)

After that visit to the theater, before dinner and the gathering he would attend with Dorotea, Fray Joaquín locked himself in the clock room of the marquis’s home, overwhelmed by conflicting emotions. He scolded himself for the fact that the room the marquis used to display his power and his good taste, confirmed by all who admired his collection, and where the priest usually sought refuge, soothed him more than prayer or reading holy books. He stopped in front of a grandfather clock as tall as he was, in ebony adorned with engraved gilded bronze. The Englishman John Ellicott had made it; he had signed its face, which depicted a lunar calendar and a celestial globe.

Milagros was happy, he had to admit as the second hand ticked. She was a success!
Why should I intrude on her life?
he asked himself later, before an elaborate table clock with bucolic figures by Droz, a Swiss watchmaker according to what the marquis had told him. How did they make such marvels? More than a dozen were displayed in the room. Musical clocks. Would Milagros like them? Some even had a dozen little bells … How would her voice sound beside them? Pendulum clocks, huge with a mechanism of gears and perpetual movement; there was one that even did arithmetic calculations. Automatons that played the flute: he loved to listen to the shepherd’s flute or the barking dog …

Milagros had refused him once already. What did she say then?
I’m sorry.… It just could never be.
Yes, those had been her words before she fled toward the Andévalo.
Why do you insist, you idiot?
he said to himself. If in that moment of desperation, at the time of the big roundup, frightened at having to flee Triana, with her parents arrested and her grandfather missing, Milagros had been unable to find a scrap of affection for him inside her, what could he expect now, when she was a star and adored by all of Madrid?

Even so, he never stopped going to the theater, not even when, months after his arrival, he had to leave the house of the marquis and the woman who had been his pupil and move to the narrow, long house on Mayor Street that he shared with Francisca. During that time, Dorotea had gradually become caught up in the capital city’s seductive habits, so different
from those in Toledo, and she stopping needing the friar, who up until that point had been her teacher, confidant and friend. Don Ignacio, the marquis, father of three children from his previous marriage, was a man as rich as he was carefree.

“It pains me to say this, Don Ignacio,” explained Fray Joaquín—both men were seated in the clock room one morning, having coffee and sweets, “but I consider it my duty to warn you that your wife is on a worrisome path.”

“Something scandalous?” queried the marquis, so shocked that he almost spilled coffee onto his waistcoat.

“No, no. Well … I don’t know. I guess not, but in the gatherings … she is always whispering and laughing with someone or another. I know that they are courting her; she is young, beautiful, refined. Doña Dorotea isn’t like the other women …”

“Why not?”

It was the friar’s turn to be taken aback. “You allow her to be courted?”

The marquis sighed. “Who doesn’t, Father? Men in our position can’t oppose it, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us. It would be … it would be uncivilized, impolite.”

“But …”

The marquis elegantly lifted one of his hands, asking for silence. “I know it’s not church doctrine, Father, but in these times marriage is no longer the sacred institution it was for our ancestors. Marriage, at least for the lucky such as ourselves, is based on courtesy, respect, politeness, sensitivity … They are nothing more than mere marriages of inclination.”

“It’s not as though there were that many marriages of love before,” the friar tried to disprove him.

“That’s true,” the marquis was quick to admit. “But we no longer have those terrified women locked up at home by their husbands. Today even destitute women, however humble they may be, want to show themselves off to men; perhaps they don’t have the sensitivity and culture of ladies, but that doesn’t stop them from displaying themselves on the streets, in theaters and at parties. True, they don’t have as many emotional needs either, their lives are too precarious for such luxuries, but the mother doesn’t exist who doesn’t want to teach her daughter, alongside the Christian virtues, to sing and dance, as well as the silent art of body language that they know full well dazzles men with its ‘will-she-won’t-she.’ ”

Fray Joaquín cleared his throat, about to answer, but the marquis continued talking.

“Think of Doña Dorotea. You taught her Latin in her father’s house; she knows how to read and she does. She is cultured, refined, sensitive; she knows how to please a man.” Don Ignacio picked up a piece of sponge cake and bit into it. “What do you think most pleases my wife about the courting game?” he then asked. The friar shook his head. “I’ll tell you: it is the first time in her life that she has the chance to choose. Her marriage was imposed upon her, like everything else since the moment she was born, but now she will choose her courtier and after a while she will leave him for another, and flirt with a third to arouse the first, or the second …”

“And if …?” Fray Joaquín stuttered. “If it leads to adultery?” He immediately regretted the question. “Doña Dorotea is trustworthy and honest,” he hastened to add, swatting the air as if he had said something ridiculous. “However, the flesh is weak, and women’s flesh … even more so.”

Yet the nobleman did not show the rage one might expect of someone who has just had his wife’s virtue questioned. Don Ignacio sipped coffee and for a few moments his gaze lingered on those clocks he so admired. He finished inspecting them with a grimace.

“They say it’s sexless love, Father, and most courtships are. Don’t think that we haven’t discussed it extensively between us, but who knows what goes on inside a woman’s bedroom? Publicly it is merely gallantry, simple flirting. And that is what is important: what others see.”

So, freed of the hindrance of that friar she’d brought from Toledo as a tutor, the marchioness learned to use her fan to communicate in a secret language that everyone employed to send messages to the dandies: touching it, opening it, fanning herself quickly or languidly, letting it drop to the floor, closing it violently … Each action meant something. She was also soon using beauty marks on her face to show how she felt inside: if she painted one on her left temple it meant she already had a suitor, if it was on her right it showed she was tired of him and accepting others; next to her eyes, lips or nose were all different ways to show her mood.

The rift between Fray Joaquín and that young woman from Toledo to whom he had taught Latin and the classics had grown as Dorotea learned the game of courtship. In the mornings, not even her husband could go
into his wife’s bedroom. “The marchioness is with her hairdresser,” replied the maid like a warden, in front of the locked bedroom door. Fray Joaquín saw the current suitor enter, a young man, clean shaven and powdered, smelling of lavender, jasmine or violet, sometimes wearing a wig, other times with his hair molded with tallow and lard by a hairdresser, but always decked out with a thousand details: cravat, watch, eyeglasses, cane, rapier at his waist, lace, embroidery and even bows on colorful silk suits with golden buttons. The marquis, the friar also noticed, did his best not to run into the suitor who feigned dignity as he snorted snuff while waiting for the butler to be called to escort him to the bedchamber.
What do they do inside there?
wondered Fray Joaquín. Dorotea would still be in bed, in her bedclothes. What would they talk about for the hours it took the marchioness to emerge from her chambers? Why had he worked so hard to teach his pupil the most modern doctrines regarding the feminine condition? All those affected dandies who pursued ladies were as vainglorious as they were uncultured, something he had seen in the gatherings; he’d been shocked at the stupidity he heard.

“Madam,” one of them boasted, “Horace was too dogmatic.”

“Without Homer, what would Virgil have been?” said another.

Names and quotes memorized just to impress: Periander, Anacharsis, Theophrastus, Epicurus, Aristippus, were dropped here and there in the ladies’ luxurious sitting rooms. And Dorotea smiled, mouth agape! They all haughtily disdained the slightest criticisms and mocked those that were presented as authoritative opinions, until, by using such tricks, some managed to gain a reputation as a sage in the eyes of a feminine audience, utterly taken in by their braggadocio.

Ignorance. Hypocrisy. Frivolity. Vanity. Fray Joaquín exploded when he listened to a dandy, who was battling to win Dorotea’s favor, begging her to give him a bottle containing the water she had washed herself with in order to use it as medicine for a sick maid. The blood left the friar’s face and gathered in his stomach, all of it, a flood, leaving him livid, watching how the young woman with whom he’d declined Latin and enjoyed reading Father Feijoo was thrilled to comply with the ridiculous request, supported by some of the ladies who applauded the initiative and others who insisted, for the good of that poor ill maid, that she agree to the cure.

Fray Joaquín was familiar with the controversial modern theories around treatments based on water. Their proponents were called “water
doctors.” Not even Feijoo had been able to call them into question, but that was a long way from giving a sick girl a lady’s dirty bath water, no matter how young, beautiful and aristocratic she was.

“I can no longer continue living in this house.”

Don Ignacio curved his lips in something similar to a smile.
Sad, melancholy?
wondered Fray Joaquín.

“I understand,” he said, understanding perfectly the reason that brought the clergyman to that decision. “It has truly been a pleasure to have you here and converse with you.”

“You have been really generous, Don Ignacio. As for your chapel—”

“Continue with it,” interrupted the marquis. “I would have to find another priest and that would be a bother,” he added, screwing up his face. “And otherwise you wouldn’t be able to enjoy my clocks, and you know that satisfies my vanity.”

The marquis smiled; the friar thought he was sincere. “I consider you a good person, Father. I’m convinced that the marchioness will not object.”

Dorotea didn’t. In fact, she bade him farewell coldly and hurriedly—her friends were waiting, she excused herself, leaving him unable to say his piece—so Fray Joaquín continued looking after the marquis’s private chapel, generously compensated for the few masses he said for the souls of the nobleman’s ancestors, which were only attended by a few servants.

WHERE WAS
Milagros? In just one evening, Fray Joaquín saw all his principles come crashing down. Despite his desires, he had managed to remain on the margins: idolizing Milagros. However, after witnessing her fall, he was overcome with doubts over what he should do. She was married, but how could her husband allow …? Had she really sold her body? The expression on the Marquis of Caja’s face, when the friar finally made up his mind to ask him, confirmed it.

“It can’t be!” escaped his lips.

“Yes, Father. But not with me,” added the nobleman quickly, seeing the friar’s expression. “Why are you interested?” he inquired when Fray Joaquín asked him if he knew where the Barefoot Girl lived.

The friar pursed his lips and didn’t answer.

“Very well,” yielded Don Ignacio at his silence.

The Marquis sent his secretary to find out about her situation and in
a few days he called for the friar. He told him about the High Court’s sentence. “It is undoubtedly the easiest thing for them to do,” he added in passing. “They just released her today.” Then he gave him an address on Amor de Dios Street.

The friar stationed himself there. He only wanted to see her and help her if necessary. He banished from his mind his worry about what he would do when that happened … if it happened. He didn’t want to get his hopes up, as he had that day he ran after her in Triana. The problem he came up against was that there were three buildings marked with the number four in Amor de Dios Street.

“There’s no way of knowing,” answered a parishioner he asked. “Look, Father, the thing is when they numbered the buildings they did it going around the blocks, so a lot of numbers are repeated. It happens all over Madrid. If they had done it linearly, by street, like in other cities, we wouldn’t have that problem.”

“Do you know … do you know which one the Barefoot Girl lives in?”

“You aren’t saying that a religious man like you …?” the man reproached.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Fray Joaquín defended himself. “I beg of you.”

“That was where the sedan chairs stopped to take her to the theater,” grumbled the man, pointing to a building.

Fray Joaquín didn’t dare go up to the house, or ask a couple of the neighbors who entered or left the building.
Really, what am I after?
he asked himself. He was still pacing up and down the street when night fell. It was a mild night yet he closed the neck of his habit and took refuge in the facing doorway. Perhaps he could see her the next day … He was thinking that when he saw two men head toward the building. One was a constable, with his truncheon tapping on the ground; the other, Pedro García. He had no trouble recognizing him. More than once he had been pointed out by a pious parishioner in Triana because of those love affairs that his grandfather, El Conde, then had to rush to fix.
Milagros’s husband,
he lamented. He could do little with him there. How had he allowed his wife to prostitute herself? Was that what he would say to him if he stepped out into his path? Both men entered the building and the friar priest remained waiting, not really knowing why. Some time later, an old woman emerged, loaded down with a straw mattress and two
bundles. She was also a gypsy, he could see her face in the light of the moon and her dark skin gave her away. It seemed they were getting ready to leave, moving out of the house. Fray Joaquín was nervous. His hands were sweating. What was going on up there? Soon he saw the constable leave the building.