The Barefoot Queen (69 page)

“It was all because of …” He hesitated for a moment. Milagros misinterpreted his silence; she thought that he didn’t want to accuse her grandfather when what Pedro didn’t want was for her to know that there were other Vegas in the capital. “It was all El Galeote’s fault. I swear to you that one day we will find him and I will kill him where he stands.”

She said nothing. It had been two years since Melchor had escaped from the Garcías.
Don’t let them catch you,
she yearned in silence. Pedro’s shouting gave her the impression that Melchor was no longer in Madrid; there were many gypsies who had scoured the entire city looking for him. Yes, Melchor’s life was in danger. She consoled herself thinking that her grandfather liked it that way. Yet what about her? Everything had turned out badly: she had no one to turn to. Her father was dead, her mother was in prison and had disowned her, and her grandfather was on the run. Cachita and Old María had disappeared. Even the little girl who carried the healer’s name seemed to be fonder of Bartola than of her! How could it be otherwise when she was never with her? And as for Pedro … He didn’t love her; he only thought about the money he could get from her to enjoy with other women: she admitted it to herself for the first time.

The following day, at the Príncipe, Milagros lifted one arm to the heavens. With the other she lifted her skirt a few inches above her ankles and began to spin gracefully, wiggling her hips as she emptied her lungs in a finale that mingled with the audience’s loud acclaim. That was all she had left: singing and dancing; taking refuge in her art as she had in Triana, when she had conceded a truce in the dispute with her mother and danced with her. Those who saw her applauded harder and harder, believing that the tears that ran down her cheeks were tears of joy.

Caridad had been a prisoner at La Galera for almost two years when the riot happened. The insubordination of a couple of hardened prostitutes had driven the warden to impose a punishment that was as humiliating as it was novel: shaving their hair and eyebrows off. The decision infuriated all the prisoners; they could stand mistreatment, but shaving their heads … never! Many, taking advantage of the unrest, decided to insist on an old demand: that they be told the length of their sentence, since they had to watch the years pass without knowing when it would end. Passions were running high and the women of La Galera rose up in rebellion, breaking everything that was in their reach, arming themselves with planks, scissors and pointed sewing implements, and they took control of the prison.

When they closed the doors of La Galera and the inmates found themselves in charge of the building, a panting and enthused Caridad found herself with a stake in her hands. In her memory the running and shouting she had taken part in was still going on. It had been … it had been amazing! A mob of women, who until then had lived without free will or ever thinking for themselves, just like the groups of Negro slaves, had suddenly, instead of submitting to the master’s orders, fought all together, like madwomen. Caridad looked around her and saw hesitation in her companions’ faces. No one knew what to do next. Someone pointed out
that they should prepare a brief addressed to the King; some supported the idea and others didn’t; some suggested running away.

As they argued, a military detachment appeared on the street, preparing to attack the jail. Like all the others, Caridad ran to the upper galleries as soon as the first blow echoed against the door to Atocha Street. Many inmates climbed up to the roofs. Shortly, the door was ripped off its hinges and close to a hundred soldiers with fixed bayonets scattered across the central courtyard and the inside of La Galera. However, to the surprise of the prisoners and the anger of the authorities and officers, the soldiers acted kindly. In one of the upper galleries, as the officers shouted to incite their men, Caridad found herself cornered by two of them. She naively raised her stake against their bayonets. One of the soldiers just shook his head, as if pardoning her. The other made a very slight motion with the tip of his bayonet, as if he wanted to let her know that she could escape. Caridad brandished her stake and slipped between them, while they just pretended they were trying to grab her. Something similar happened between the other soldiers and the rest of the prisoners, who ran from one side to the other in the face of the troops’ passivity, when not outright collaboration.

The situation dragged on. Desperation appeared in the faces of some officers who shouted themselves hoarse demanding obedience, but how could they force those soldiers conscripted in miserable towns in rural Castile to contain the women? Many of them had been condemned to serve eight years in the army for mistakes like the ones those unfortunate women had made, and the prisoners kept reminding them of that during the siege. The authorities decided to have the detachment fall back and the women cheered their withdrawal, feeling vindicated: their triumphant shouts echoed throughout the night. The gate and surrounding areas of La Galera were well guarded by the same troops that had refused to act against them but did clear out the crowd of curious onlookers that milled around Atocha Street.

At dawn the next day, however, the royal magistrates themselves showed up at La Galera leading an urban militia made up of some fifty God-fearing citizens, all well built and armed with whips, sticks and iron bars. They went in to subdue them ruthlessly and the women ran off in terror. Caridad, still brandishing the stake, saw two of the militiamen beating Herminia with an iron bar. Her blood boiled at the viciousness
with which they were taking out their rage on the poor woman. Herminia, curled up on the ground, covering her face, begged for mercy. Caridad screamed something. What was it? She never was able to recall. But she pounced on the two men and hit one with the stake. Amid the barrage of blows that rained down on her, she could see how Herminia, from the ground, grabbed one of the men’s legs and sank her teeth into his thigh. Her friend’s reaction spurred her on and she continued blindly swinging her stake. Only the intervention of one of the magistrates kept her from being beaten to death.

One by one, the some 150 women prisoners were gathered in the courtyard of the jail, some limping, others with throbbing kidneys, chests or backs, their noses broken and their lips bleeding. Most of them hung their heads, defeated. Silent.

A couple of hours was all it took for the warden to take back control of the women’s prison. With the rebellion snuffed out, he promised the prisoners that he would review all those sentences that had no fixed release date; he also warned of the harsh penalties that the instigators of the revolt would face.

Caridad, the Negress with the stake who had taken on two upright citizens, was the first to be pointed out. Fifty lashes was the punishment she would receive, in the prison courtyard, in full view of the others, along with three other women reported as having incited the mutiny by a treacherous woman imprisoned for peddling, who was rewarded with her freedom.

The lashes were merciless, cracking on the women’s backs after a whistle that cut through the air. The authorities gave strict instructions for their harsh discipline; how else could they put an end to a revolt in La Galera when that was where mutinous women in other jails were sent as a punishment?

Caridad’s last memory was the screams of the other women when the warden finally ended the horrific punishment and they dragged her out of the prison. “Stay strong, Cachita!” “We’ll be waiting for you!” “You can do it,
morena
!” “I’ll save you a cigar!”

“
BE JOYFUL
and give thanks, sinner. Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Virgin of Atocha do not wish you dead.”

She heard those words without realizing they referred to her. Caridad, having been unconscious for several days, had just opened her eyes. Lying face down on a cot, with her chin resting on a pillow, her vision cleared gradually until she was able to make out the presence of a priest by her bed, sitting on a chair with a prayer book in his hands.

“Let us pray,” he heard the chaplain for the dying poor order her before launching into a litany.

The only thing that came from Caridad’s lips was a long, dull moan: the mere breath of the priest on her flayed back caused her as much pain as the whiplashes. Without daring to move her head, she turned her eyes: she was in a large vaulted room with lines of beds; the air was foul and hard to breathe; the wails of sick women mixed with the priest’s chanting in Latin. She was in the hospital of La Pasión, right next door to La Galera, the one the inmates sewed the white gowns for.

“For the moment … your soul has no need of me,” the chaplain told her when he finished his prayers. “Pray that I need not come to your deathbed again. One of your companions has already passed on to a better life. May God have mercy on her soul.”

As soon as the chaplain planted himself in the middle of the room, his eyes searching out some other woman in her death throes, another priest appeared, this one insisting on hearing her confession. Caridad couldn’t even speak.

“Water,” she managed to articulate in response to the priest’s insistence.

“Woman,” replied the confessor, “the health of your soul is more important than that of your body. That is our mission and the objective of this hospital: taking care of souls. You shouldn’t waste a moment before reaching peace with God. You can drink later.”

Confessions, communions, daily masses for the souls in those rooms; readings of the holy scriptures; sermons and more sermons to procure the salvation of the sick and their repentance, all in forceful tones, rising above the women’s coughing, screams of pain and lamenting … and death. Thus spent Caridad that month in the hospital. After the chaplain for the dying poor had confirmed she would live and the confessor was satisfied with her hoarse, stammering confession, one of the surgeons struggled to sew up her wounds, awkwardly mending the bloody mass her back had become. Caridad howled with pain until she fainted. Every
once in a while, the doctor and his assistants, also under the watchful control of a priest, applied a salve to her back that made it burn as if they were whipping her with a red-hot iron. More often, however, the barber-surgeon would show up, one of the several advanced apprentices who went from bed to bed in both hospitals—El General and La Pasión—performing forced bloodlettings on the sick. He would perforate a vein with a cannula while she, impotent, watched the blood leave her body and drip into a basin. She witnessed how the second of the prisoners punished thus died, two beds away from hers. Weakened, pale and gaunt, she died amid prayer and holy oils after two bloodlettings: one on her left arm and another on her right. “To even out the blood,” Caridad heard the surgeon say in a boastful tone. The third prisoner decided to flee, taking advantage of the commotion caused by a group of wealthy noblewomen who came to La Pasión each Sunday, dressed in coarse worsted linen for the occasion, to help the ill with their hygiene and bring them sweets and chocolate. Out of the corner of her eye, Caridad saw her get up and stumble away, while she, prostrate in bed, nodded time and again, promising to improve her conduct, before that grande dame, her attire as humble as her perfume was costly, who berated her for her faults as if she were a child, only to then reward her contrition with sweets and sips of the cups of hot chocolate they brought with them. At least the chocolate was delicious.

She never knew what happened to the runaway—Sebastiana she seemed to remember was her name—not even in La Galera when the doctors decided to send her back there. She inquired about her, but nobody could tell her anything. “Good luck, Sebastiana!” she repeated to herself, as she had that Sunday night when the sister who guarded over them noticed her absence and sounded the alarm. She envied her. As she got better she even considered running away herself, but she didn’t know where to go, what to do … Tears slid down her face when she was reunited with Frasquita and the other inmates, who received her with tenderness, feeling sorry that she had suffered a punishment that all of them equally deserved. She searched for Herminia with her gaze and found her to one side, hidden among the others. Caridad gave her a smile. Many of the inmates turned their heads toward the small blonde and opened a path through the group. After a few moments of silence, some encouraged her; others, who were behind Herminia, pushed her gently; they all applauded once the two women were standing face to face. The
blonde went to embrace her, but Caridad stopped her—she couldn’t bear having her back touched; instead they kissed amid tears and heightened emotion, both theirs and that of many of the other women.

What was I thinking? What would I do outside of here?
Caridad asked herself in that moment. La Galera was still her home and the prisoners her family. Even the sentry and the ever-dour warden treated her with a certain benevolence, recalling the trail of blood she had left behind when she was taken to the hospital. Caridad hadn’t instigated the mutiny or participated more than the others, they both knew that. That compassion translated into her exemption from the harder tasks and a certain tolerance when the prisoners paid with their own money for some oil and rosemary branches to prepare a salve they used to soothe Caridad’s deformed and still badly damaged back.