The Barefoot Queen (44 page)

After eating, Caridad and the old gypsy lazed around waiting for night to fall. Every once in a while Caridad’s gaze drifted toward Milagros, but María kept her from going over to console her, even with her mere presence. They no longer heard her sobbing. Milagros was still beneath the
blankets and tent cloth until, eventually and suddenly, she moved jerkily as if trying to call attention to herself. Just like a capricious, sulky child, thought María, who smiled as she imagined her wanting to know what was going on in the persistent silence that surrounded her sanctuary. She must be hungry and thirsty, but she was stubborn like her mother … and her grandfather. A Vega who never surrenders!
Tonight you’ll demonstrate that,
she promised as she watched her shivering under the blankets again.

SAGRARIO AND
the two men arrived together. María made them wait on the threshold.

“Let’s go, Milagros!”

The girl responded with a violent kick beneath the blankets. María had had a lot of time to think about how Milagros would react and how to deal with her: only hurt pride and the fear of great shame would get her to obey. She approached, planning to uncover her, but Milagros clung to the blanket. Even so, the old woman was partially successful.

“Look at her!” she said to those at the door, still pulling on the blanket the girl was grabbing. “Girl, do you want all the gypsies to know what a coward you are? The rumors will spread so far they’ll reach your mother’s ears!”

“Leave my mother out of this!” shouted Milagros.

“Girl,” insisted María in a firm voice; the blanket covering Milagros was now taut in one of her hands. “There isn’t a single Vega in Triana. At this point I am the elder of the family and you are nothing more than a gypsy girl without a man to depend on; you must obey me. If you don’t get up, I’ll tell Fermín and Roque to carry you, do you hear me? You know I’ll do it and you know they’ll obey me. And they’ll take you through the alley like a spoiled child.”

“They won’t do it. I’m a Carmo—!”

Milagros didn’t get to finish the sentence. When she’d heard it, María had opened her hand and released the blanket with a scorn the girl couldn’t see but could sense in all its intensity. Had she been about to repudiate being a Vega? Before the old woman had turned around, Milagros was already on her feet.

And she sang. She sang beside Sagrario. Her voice—aided by the effects of a glass of red wine that Old María forced the girl to drink as
soon as they entered the inn—was powerful and joyous enough to cover up her fear and shame. Caridad also danced again, and again she ignited the crowd, which was somewhat larger than the night before. Word had spread. But not as much as it had by the third night, when Sagrario, after dancing with Milagros, moved out of the circle and introduced the girl with an exaggerated bow as she had planned with the old woman. Milagros found herself alone, amid the applause that still hadn’t waned. She was panting, gleaming … and smiling! noticed María with her heart on tenterhooks. Then the girl lifted a hand, adorned with some colored ribbons, like her hair, and asked for silence. The healer felt a shiver run through her stiff limbs. How long had it been since she’d felt that pleasure? Fermín, with his foot on the chair and the guitar over his left thigh, exchanged a victorious look with the old woman. The audience was reluctant to quiet down; someone tapped on a glass with a knife and shushing followed.

Milagros endured having all eyes on her.

“Come on, pretty girl!” they urged from one of the tables.

“Sing, gypsy!”

“Sing, Milagros,” encouraged Caridad. “Sing like only you know how.”

And she began, a cappella, before Fermín joined in with the guitar.

“I know how to sing the story of a gypsy …” Her lively voice, with its extraordinary timbre, filled the entire inn; Fermín and the others immediately recognized the gypsy
seguidilla
but they let her finish the verse unaccompanied, savoring her singing. “… who fell in love with a lad of the pale race.”

When Milagros was about to launch into the second verse, the crowd received the guitar’s entrance with applause and compliments for the girl. The women in the group joined in with the handclapping. María was crying as she clapped, Caridad biting down hard on one of her
papantes.
Milagros continued singing, confident, firm, young, beautiful, like a goddess who enjoyed knowing she was adored.

Seville was a singing school, a music university, a workshop where all styles came together before heading out into the world. Caridad could arouse the men with her provocative dances, as the gypsy women did with their
zarabandas
—deemed sacrilegious by the priests and the sanctimonious—but no one, none of those men or women, prostitutes
and criminals, washerwomen and artisans, friars and maids, could remain unmoved by the marvelous spell of a song that captured their emotions.

And the crowd went wild: cheers, acclaim and applause. And as the girl’s performance reached its climax she was showered with countless promises of eternal love.

“She’s a Vega,” El Conde whispered to keep from waking the other family members sleeping with them.

Rafael García and his wife remained with their eyes open in the darkness, stretched out fully dressed on a pile of straw and dried branches that served as a mattress. Reyes covered herself with a worn blanket. She was old and felt chilled. The forges had always kept the upper floors warm, but Rafael hadn’t yet reached a definitive agreement with the
payo
blacksmiths and they were still working with portable anvils and holes in the floor.

“We could be making a lot of money,” insisted La Trianera.

“She’s El Galeote’s granddaughter!” objected Rafael again, this time raising his voice.

This shout prompted the sounds of bodies stirring and the odd unintelligible word spoken in dreams. Reyes waited until the murmur of their breathing quieted down.

“It’s been months since anyone’s heard anything from Melchor. El Galeote must be dead, someone must have killed him—”

“Son of a bitch,” her husband interrupted, again in a whisper. “I should have done it myself long ago. Even so, the girl is still his granddaughter, a Vega.”

“The girl is a gold mine, Rafael.” Reyes let a few seconds pass and snorted
toward the flaking ceiling; her next words were very hard for her. “She is the best singer I’ve ever heard,” she managed to admit.

Milagros’s success had spread by word of mouth and, like many other gypsies, Reyes was curious and had gone to listen to her at the inn. She stood in the door, huddled behind the audience that was larger every night. And while she couldn’t see her, she did hear her. Lord, did she ever!

“OK, she sings well, so what?” asked El Conde as if he wanted to put an end to the conversation. “She is still a Vega and she hates us as much as her grandfather and her mother do. May she turn mute!”

“Let’s marry her to Pedro,” she insisted, reiterating the suggestion that had started the argument.

“You are insane,” repeated Rafael in turn.

“No. That girl is in love with our Pedro. She always has been. I’ve seen her spying on him and following him. She melts when he’s around. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about. What I’m not sure is if Pedro would be willing to—”

“Pedro will do what I tell him to!”

After that show of authority, El Conde remained silent. Reyes smiled again at the chipped ceiling. How simple it was to steer a man, no matter how powerful he was … All it took was some goading to his pride.

“If she marries Pedro, she will have to obey you as well,” said Reyes then.

Rafael knew it, but he liked hearing it: him ordering around a Vega!

Reyes had picked up on a change in his attitude; he was no longer raging at the mere mention of the Vegas. Rafael was already fondling the money. “And how do we arrange it?” he might now ask. Or perhaps, “María, the healer, will object.” “I will go to the council of elders if need be.” Any of those sentences could be his next.

The old woman. He chose the old woman.

“That grumpy old hag?” was all Reyes said. “Actually, the girl is a Carmona. Without her parents around, it will be Inocencio, as the patriarch of the Carmonas, who decides. He wouldn’t dare if El Galeote or the mother were around, but without them …”

“And the Negress?” El Conde surprised her by saying. “She’s always with her.”

Reyes held back a laugh. “She’s just a stupid slave. Give her a cigar and she’ll do whatever you want.”

“Even so, I have a bad feeling about that Negress,” grumbled her husband.

ONE AFTERNOON
, in the alley, Pedro García came out of his family’s smithy as Milagros was passing and smiled at her. Since she had begun singing at the inn there were many who now smiled at her or stopped to talk to her, but not Pedro. Even her girlfriends had tried to coax their way into the musical group by flattering her. “Did any of them do anything for you when the council forbade you from living in the alley?” said Old María, ending the matter.

That afternoon the old woman frowned over the encounter with Pedro, much as she had when listening to Milagros’s idea about dancing with some of her girlfriends at the inn. She suspected the meeting was no accident and tugged at the girl’s arm, but Milagros didn’t budge; she had stopped, spellbound, a few steps from the young García. Old María saw her stammer and turn red like … like some ridiculous, shy little girl.

“How are you?” The boy feigned an interest before María snorted in his direction.

“Fine, until now!” the old woman answered curtly. “Can you move it along? Don’t you have things to do?”

The young man ignored the old gypsy’s presence and words. He widened his smile, revealing perfect white teeth that stood out against his dark skin. Then, as if he had to leave against his will, he half closed his eyes and brought his lips together in what could be seen as a hint of a kiss.

“See you soon,” he said in parting.

“Don’t you go near her,” warned María after the young man had turned his back to them.
She’s not for you,
she was about to add, but the tremendous beating of Milagros’s heart, which she could feel in the forearm she was holding on to, bewildered her, so she stopped.

Then: “Let’s go,” insisted the old woman, pulling on her arm. “Come on,
morena
!” she shouted to Caridad.

The effort María had to employ to get the girl to keep walking was in sharp contrast to La Trianera’s smug expression. She was hiding behind a small window on the upper floor of the smithy, and she nodded in satisfaction as she watched them cross the alley and head to the building
where the Carmonas lived: the healer cursing ostentatiously, Milagros as if floating, and the
morena
 … the
morena
behind them, like a shadow.

They were going to see Inocencio. If it was money that was needed to free Milagros’s parents, they now had it. And they trusted they’d have more, despite the bribes they were forced to pay to the constables so they’d allow them to continue singing at the inn and not investigate whether they’d been arrested in the roundup and freed in Málaga. María patted her pocket with the coins; they had only had to give in on one point.

“The Negress has to stop dancing,” Bienvenido had warned her one night. He too was pleased with the profits.

The old woman had grumbled.

“They’ll close down my inn,” Bienvenido had insisted. “We can bribe the officials to let a girl sing, and even dance, but several friars and priests have already denounced Caridad’s dancing; they’re appalled and there’s nothing we can do about them, María. I promised the constable that she wouldn’t dance again. He won’t give me another chance.”

And they wouldn’t have given it to him, the old woman had admitted to herself. Since Seville had lost the monopoly on trade with the Indies in favor of Cádiz, there was less wealth. The shopkeepers were poor and the difference between those who lived in absolute misery—the vast majority—and a minority of corrupt officials, haughty noblemen who owned vast lands and thousands of clergymen, both regular and secular, had heightened. The clergymen saw it as a favorable moment to stress the Christian doctrine of resignation to the people with sermons, masses, rosaries and processions. There had never been so many public sermons threatening the faithful with all kinds of fire and brimstone as retribution for their licentious lives. And unlike the court in Madrid, with its two comedy theaters and their permanent companies of actors—the Cruz and the Príncipe—the Archbishop of Seville had managed to ban theater, opera and comedies in his archdiocese.

“As long as no comedies are shown in Seville, its people will be free of the plague,” a fervent Jesuit father had already prophesied at the end of the last century. And the city that had been a cradle of the dramatic arts, that had erected the first covered theater in Spain, was now forced to hide and arrive cloaked to enjoy the singing of a young gypsy virtuosa. But
Caridad’s dancing, with her breasts swaying and her lower belly and hips thrusting, was a carnal provocation worthy of eternal hellfire.