The Barefoot Queen (17 page)

The only person in the Gaucín inn who didn’t notice the uproar of the smugglers before their shouts and laughter flooded the surroundings of the inn was Caridad; the others could hear the murmur from the distance becoming a clamorous riot as the men and horses drew nearer. The four young Vega men stiffened, nervous, looking at each other, searching in Tomás for the calmness their inexperience denied them. Melchor and Bernardo, on the other hand, received the men from Encinas Reales with their hunger sated, with good cigars between their fingers, enjoying the strong young mountain wine, as if with each silent sip, looking at each other in perfect harmony, they sought to reclaim part of those horrific years they had spent fettered to the oars of the royal galley ships.

While all the other diners at the inn moved restlessly on their benches, Caridad nibbled enthusiastically on the bones of the young goat roasted
over the wood fire and seasoned with aromatic herbs. She couldn’t remember ever having eaten anything so exquisite! Not even the bluish mouthfuls of smoke the gypsy exhaled beside her were distracting, much less the racket made by an approaching party of smugglers. The gypsies didn’t usually eat well: their meats were often almost rotten and the vegetables were overripe, but at least there was more variety than the gruel with salt cod that the master fed the slaves day in and day out at his plantation. A little glass of spirits, that was what he gave them in the mornings so they’d be awake and willing to work. No, Caridad certainly wouldn’t stay on with the gypsies for the food, although that plus a place to sleep … “Cachita, you can leave whenever you want, you are free, you understand? Free,” Milagros told her time and again. And what would she do without Milagros? A few days before leaving with her grandfather’s smuggling party, during a lazy twilight that seemed to resist leaving Seville in darkness, the girl had once again raised the subject of her grief over having to marry Alejandro Vargas. She wanted Pedro García;
I love him,
she had sobbed, the two women sitting on the bank of the Guadalquivir, looking out out over the river instead of at each other. Later, Milagros had rested her head on Caridad’s shoulder, just as Marcelo used to do, and she had stroked her hair in an attempt to console her. Where would she go without Milagros? The mere memory of what had happened with the potter fogged her thinking; Caridad mentally transported herself to the day she had sat beneath that orange tree waiting for death to overtake her. That night she’d seen Eleggua, the god who governs men’s fates, he who decides their lives according to his whims, approaching. How long had it been—she thought at that moment—since she had spoken to the Orishas, since she had made them any offerings, since she had been mounted by them? Then she made an effort and sang to him, and capricious Eleggua spun around her, smoking a big cigar, until he was satisfied with that humble offering and sent the gypsy to help her keep on living. Melchor respected her. He had also been the one who had taken her to San Jacinto and introduced her to Fray Joaquín. There, in that church under construction, was the Virgin of Candlemas: Oyá to the Cuban slaves. Oyá wasn’t her Orisha, that was Oshún, the Virgin of Charity, but it was always said that there was no Oyá without Oshún or Oshún without Oyá, and since then Caridad went to pray to the Virgin of Candlemas. She knelt in front of her and, when no one was watching,
switched her Hail Marys for the murmuring of the sacred songs to the Orisha the Virgin represented, rocking forward and back. Before leaving, she dropped a stolen tobacco leaf, the only thing she had to offer her. Over the time she’d been in Seville she had seen the free black people of the city: most of them were miserable wretches begging for alms on the streets, lost amid the hundreds of beggars who swarmed the capital, fighting for a coin. She was fine with the gypsies, concluded Caridad, she loved Milagros, and Melchor took care of her.

“Negress, there’s no more bone to gnaw on.”

The gypsy’s words brought her back to reality and with it came the ruckus going on outside. Caridad found herself with a picked-clean shoulder blade in her hands. She left it on the plate just as the doors of the inn opened and a flood of loud-mouthed, dirty, armed men came in. Caridad made out several mulattoes and even a couple of friars. The innkeeper struggled to accommodate them, but it was impossible to fit them all in. The smugglers shouted and laughed; some unceremoniously lifted others who had taken seats, imposing an authority that was reinforced by the compliance of the displaced. There were some women also, prostitutes who followed them, brazenly selling their charms to those who seemed to be the captains of the various groups that made up the party. The innkeeper and his family started to bring over jugs of wine, liquor and trays brimming with goat to the tables; he worried about serving those who shouted the most and his wife and two young daughters trying to avoid slaps on the arse and unwanted embraces.

Four men went to take the free seats on the long benches adjacent to the gypsies’ table, but they failed to do so before three others showed up and stopped them.

“Out of here,” a short, fat man ordered them in a reedy voice. He had a round face with hairless cheeks, and was dressed in a little jacket that looked about to burst, just like the red sash that held back his enormous belly and from which peeked the handles of a knife and a pistol.

Caridad, just like the young gypsies, felt a shiver when she saw how those four rough smugglers had come over to them, full of their own importance, and they stood up with an obedience bordering on servility. The fat man dropped heavily onto the bench beside Bernardo, in front of Melchor; the other two took the spots that were empty. A couple of prostitutes quickly came over. The fat man pulled out of his sash a
double-edged cutlass and a miquelet lock pistol with lovely golden arabesque carvings on the barrel. Caridad observed how the man’s small, thick fingers meticulously lined up the two weapons on the table, beside Melchor’s shotgun. When he seemed satisfied, he spoke again, this time addressing the gypsy.

“I didn’t know you were in this business too, Galeote.”

The innkeeper, with no need for shouts or waving, had come over promptly to the gypsies’ table to serve the new guests. Melchor waited for him to finish before answering.

“I heard that you were one of the captains and I rushed over. If El Gordo’s going, I said to myself, there must be good tobacco.”

One of the men accompanying the captain shifted restlessly on the bench: for some time, ever since he’d started to lead his own band, no one had dared to use that nickname when they spoke to him; there were many who had paid dearly for such slip-ups. They called him “El Fajado” now, referring to his sash instead of the belly behind it.

El Gordo smacked his tongue. “Why do you insult me, Melchor?” he then said. “Is it something I’ve done?”

The gypsy narrowed his eyes in his direction. “I’ll trade you all the pounds of fat on your belly for my years at the oars.”

El Gordo straightened his thick neck almost imperceptibly, thought for a few seconds and smiled with blackish teeth. “No deal, Galeote, I prefer my fat. I’ll let it go this time, but be careful about calling me that in front of my men.”

Then it was the Vega gypsies who tensed their backs on the benches, wondering how Melchor would react to that threat.

“It’d be best that our paths don’t cross again, then,” he suggested.

“It’d be best,” the other agreed, after nodding. “You are using a Negress as a backpacker now?” he asked, gesturing toward Caridad, who was witnessing the argument with her mouth and eyes wide.

“What Negress?” asked the gypsy, stock-still, regal.

El Gordo was about to point to her but he stopped himself. Then he shook his head and grabbed a shoulder of goat. That was the signal for the others to pounce on their food and for the prostitutes to approach and start flattering the newcomers.

THE INN
at Gaucín was the place chosen to await news of the contraband merchandise from Gibraltar landing on the coast of Manilva, a small town some five leagues from the inn that belonged to the municipality of Casares, devoted to fishing and grape and sugarcane growing. Through their various agents—Melchor had done it with the help of Bernardo—all the parties of smugglers had already acquired the goods they wanted in the British enclave, for a low price, thus evading the Spanish monopoly. Once the deals were struck, the products remained stored and conveniently secured in the warehouses of Gibraltar ship owners, waiting for the right climatic conditions to move them from the rock to the Spanish coasts.

Two warnings had been sent to Gibraltar: the parties were gathered in Gaucín. They were just waiting for the ship owners operating on the rock beneath different flags to confirm the night when the disembarking would take place. Meanwhile, the music of guitars, flutes and tambourines sounding in the inn and the wide field that opened out around it grew in momentum along with the jugs and wineskins that were passed from hand to hand. The men, gathered in groups, bet their future earnings on cards or dice. Quarrels started here and there, but the captains made sure they didn’t go any further: they needed their porters. Merchants and traders from the surrounding areas, as well as some prostitutes and criminals, came around in the hopes of easy money.

Melchor, Bernardo and their companions strolled amid that throng noting the cool of the night that drew near. The gypsies weren’t going to sleep on the floor in front of the stove, like the captains and their lieutenants would, nor even in the stables or haylofts: they refused to sleep near
payos
; it was their law. They would head off to take shelter among the trees and sleep out in the open; but until that moment came, Melchor, leading the procession, stopped to listen to music in a corner, to watch the betting in another and to chat here and there with acquaintances among the smugglers.

“Want to bet your Negress in a game of dice with me, Galeote?” proposed the captain of a small party from Cuevas Bajas, crammed with other men around a wooden plank.

Caridad’s head turned in fear toward the smuggler.
Would he accept the bet?
crossed her mind.

“Why do you want to lose, Tordo?” That was what they called the
captain. “You’d lose your money if I won, and your health if I lost. What would you do with a woman like this?”

El Tordo hesitated for a moment before replying, but he ended up adding a forced smile to the guffaws of the men playing with him.

Melchor left the improvised dice table behind and the nasty comments still audible around it and continued strolling.

“Melchor, have you gone crazy? We are going to end up with problems,” Tomás whispered, making a gesture toward Caridad.

Despite the cape that covered her, the woman was unable to hide her large breasts and the voluptuous curves of her hips, which excited the imagination of all who watched her move.

“I know, Brother,” answered Melchor, raising his voice so the other gypsies could hear him. “That’s exactly why. The sooner we have those problems, the sooner we can rest. Besides, this way I’ll be the one who chooses who to have them with.”

“Are you that interested in the Negress?” asked Tomás, surprised.

Caridad pricked up her ears.

“Didn’t you hear her sing?” answered the gypsy.

And Melchor chose: a backpacker old enough to be obliged to defend his manliness, the value that earned them a place in the tacit hierarchy of criminals; he was grim-faced, with a shabby beard and bloodshot eyes that showed how much wine and liquor he had consumed. The man was chatting in a group, but he had turned his attention toward Caridad.

“Stay alert, Nephews,” alerted Melchor under his breath while he handed his musket to Bernardo. “What are you looking at, you pig?” he then shouted at the backpacker.

The reaction was immediate. The man put a hand to his dagger and his companions tried to do the same, but before they could, the four Vega nephews had pounced on them and were already threatening them with their weapons. Melchor remained immobile before the backpacker, with his hands empty, challenging him only with his gaze.

Silence fell around the group. Tomás, a step behind his brother, grabbed the handle of his knife, still in his sash. Caridad was trembling, to one side, with her eyes fixed on the gypsy. Bernardo was smiling. Some distance away, out in the field, someone called El Gordo’s attention, who turned his gaze toward where they pointed.
He’s got some guts!
he admitted.

“She’s my Negress,” muttered Melchor. The backpacker moved his
extended dagger threateningly toward the gypsy. “How dare you look at her, you rascal?”

The new insult made the man charge at Melchor, but the gypsy had the situation under control: he had seen him move clumsily, inebriated, and it was so crowded that the man could only move in a straight line, toward him. Melchor stepped aside nimbly and the backpacker passed to one side, stumbling, with his arm awkwardly extended. It was Tomás who put an end to the quarrel: with rare speed he pulled his dagger from his sash and launched a stab at the attacker’s wrist, making him fall to the floor, disarmed.