The Barefoot Queen (47 page)

Pedro García looked the old healer up and down. She stood arrogantly, expecting a respect that … She was alone on a remote street of Seville, in the middle of the night! What respect could she be expecting, no matter how old she was?

“I swear by the blood of the Vegas that Milagros will not marry you!” threatened María. “I’ll tell her …”

The gypsy boy stopped listening. He trembled at the very thought of his grandfather and father, who would be enraged if the girl refused to marry him. He didn’t think twice. He grabbed the healer by the neck and her voice muted into an unintelligible gurgle.

“Stupid old hag,” he muttered.

He squeezed with just one hand. María gasped and sank her atrophied fingers into the arms of her aggressor as if they were hooks. Pedro García ignored her hands. How easy it was, he discovered as the seconds passed and the old woman’s eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets. He squeezed more, until he felt something crunch inside the old woman’s neck. It was simple, fast and silent, tremendously silent. He let her go and María collapsed into a small, wrinkled pile.

The brotherhood that took care of the retablo’s altar would deal with the corpse, he thought before leaving her there, and they would tell the authorities, who would exhibit her, or perhaps not, somewhere in Seville to see if anyone claimed her. Most likely she would be buried in a mass grave, paid for by gifts from pious parishioners.

The Santa Ana parish, in the heart of Triana, had the largest congregation in Seville—more than ten thousand—and was served by three parish priests, twenty-three presbyters, a subdeacon, five minor clerics and two tonsured monks. But despite the large number of faithful and priests, Santa Ana made Milagros tremble. The building was a solid rectangular Gothic construction with three naves, the central one narrower and taller than the others, interrupted in the middle by the choir. It had been erected in the eighteenth century by order of King Alfonso X to show his gratitude to the mother of the Virgin Mary for having miraculously healed his eye.

To Milagros it was a dark place filled with golden retablos, statues and paintings of sorrowful, wounded Christs, saints, martyrs and virgins who scrutinized her and seemed to be interrogating her. The girl was trying to shake off that oppressive feeling when she noticed that her bare feet were walking on a rough surface; she looked at the floor and jumped to one side, holding in a swear word that came out as a snort: she was on top of one of the many stones beneath which rested the remains of the church’s benefactors. She pulled closer to Caridad and they both remained still. A priest appeared beneath the arch of Our Lady of Antigua, in the nave of the Gospel, behind which was the sacristy. He did so in silence, trying not to disturb the faithful, who were mostly women praying and commending
themselves to Saint Ann for nine days in a row, either to achieve their desired fertility or to protect their obvious pregnancies; it had been known in Triana and throughout Seville since ancient times that the Holy Mother of Mary interceded for women’s conception.

Milagros observed the priest and Reyes whispering a few paces from them; Reyes pointed at her again and again, and the priest looked at her with disapproval. La Trianera had come to replace Old María in her life.
Where is that stubborn old woman?
Milagros asked herself again, as she had done a thousand times in the last few days. She missed her. Surely they would be able to forgive each other—why not? She tried to banish the old woman from her mind when the priest made an authoritative gesture for her to follow him: María wouldn’t have liked her being there, entrusting herself to the church and preparing her baptism; surely not. When she passed Reyes, La Trianera tried to move Caridad aside.

“She comes with me,” said Milagros, pulling on her friend so she wouldn’t stay with Reyes.

After Old María’s disappearance and until her parents returned, Cachita was the only person she had left, and the girl sought her out more than ever, sometimes even at the expense of meeting Pedro. She was forced to admit that since the two families had agreed on the wedding, her young fiancé’s attitude had changed, albeit subtly: he still smiled at her, talked to her and let his eyes drop in that tender gesture that thrilled her, but there was something … something different in him that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

The priest was waiting for her beneath the arch of the Virgin of Antigua.

“She comes with me,” repeated Milagros when he too was about to object to Caridad.

The reproachful expression with which the man of God took in her words indicated to the girl that perhaps she had been too harsh in her tone but, still, she went into the sacristy with Caridad. She was starting to be tired of everyone telling her what to do; María didn’t do that, all she did was complain and grumble, but Reyes … she went everywhere with her! At Bienvenido’s inn she even wrote down the songs she should perform. She tried to object, but the guitars obeyed La Trianera and she had no choice but to submit to them. Fermín and Roque were no longer part of the group, nor was Sagrario. They had all been replaced by members of
the García family, and only the Garcías took part. La Trianera had even forbidden Caridad from joining in with the songs and dances.
What does a Negro know about clapping fandangos and
seguidillas
?
she spat at Milagros. And during the performance, Caridad stood motionless, as if attached to the wall of the inn’s kitchen, without even a bad cigar to put in her mouth. Reyes had taken over the management of all the money they made. She handed it over to Rafael, the patriarch, and unlike Old María, El Conde didn’t seem willing to reward Caridad with
papantes.

The only moment when Milagros could escape La Trianera’s control was at night, when she was sleeping. Inocencio had refused to let her move into the Garcías’ part of the alley until the wedding was concluded, and she and Caridad remained in the old, desolate dwelling she’d grown up in. However, La Trianera had saddled them with an old widowed aunt to keep an eye on Milagros. Her name was Bartola.

“What are the commandments of the Holy Church?”

The question brought Milagros back to reality: they were both standing inside the sacristy in front of a carved wooden table. The priest sat behind it, interrogating her with a stern expression. He didn’t have the courtesy to invite them to sit down in the chairs. The girl had no idea about those commandments. She was about to admit her ignorance but then she remembered a piece of advice her grandfather had given her once when she was very young: “You are a gypsy. Never tell
payos
the truth.” She smiled.

“I know them … I know them …” she then replied. “I’ve got them on the tip of my tongue,” she added, touching it. The priest waited a few seconds, his fingers crossed on the tabletop. “But they don’t want to come out, those d—”

“And the prayers?” the priest interrupted her before the girl said something inappropriate. “What prayers are you familiar with?”

“All of them,” she answered confidently.

“Tell me the Our Father.”

“Father, you asked me if I’m familiar with them, not if I know them.”

The priest’s face didn’t change. He knew what gypsies were like. He regretted having accepted the responsibility for helping this insolent gypsy girl, but the principal parish priest seemed very interested in baptizing her and bringing the gypsy community into the church fold, and
he was just a simple priest without a curacy or benefice. His lack of reaction emboldened Milagros, who reached a similar conclusion: the priests wanted her to be baptized.

“What three people make up the Holy Trinity?” the man insisted.

“Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar,” exclaimed Milagros, stifling a giggle. She had heard that joke from her grandfather, in the settlement, when he was making fun of Uncle Tomás. They all would laugh.

But this time even Caridad, who remained a step behind Milagros, in her slave shirt with her straw hat in her hands, gave a start. The priest was surprised by her reaction.

“Do you know?” he asked her.

“Yes … Father,” answered Caridad.

The priest tried to urge her to list them with his gestures, but Caridad had already lowered her gaze and kept it on the floor.

“Who are they?” he ended up asking.

“The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost,” she recited.

Milagros turned toward her friend and listened to the following questions, all directed at Caridad.

“Are you baptized?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Do you know the Creed, the other prayers and the commandments?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Well, teach them to her!” he exclaimed, pointing to Milagros. “Didn’t you want her to accompany you? As a priest, when an adult … or something similar,” he added sarcastically, “wants to enter into the holy sacrament of baptism, I am obliged to meet that person and testify that their life is governed by the three Christian virtues: faith, hope and charity. Listen: the first is what every good Christian should believe, and that is in the Creed. The second refers to how you must act, for which you must know the commandments of the Lord and of the Holy Church; and lastly, the third: what you can expect of God, and that is found in the Our Father and other prayers. Don’t come back here without having learned them all,” he added, abandoning the idea of indoctrinating the gypsy in the catechism of Father Eusebio. He’d settle for that brazen girl being able to recite the Creed!

Without giving her a chance to reply, the priest got up from the table
and repeatedly shook both hands with his fingers extended, as if scaring off a couple of pesky little animals, to indicate that they leave the sacristy.

“How did it go in there?” asked La Trianera, who was waiting for them at one of the church doors, where she had used her time well, discreetly asking for alms, predicting fertility for each of the young female parishioners who went inside.

“I’m already half baptized,” responded Milagros seriously. “It’s true,” she insisted to the suspicious woman. “All I need is the other half.”

But Reyes was no dull
paya
and she wasn’t about to be outdone. “Well, be careful, girl,” she answered, pointing at her with a finger that slid through the air from side to side, at the height of the girl’s waist, “that they don’t cut you up to baptize the other half, and your witty repartee doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.”

MILAGROS HAD
trouble retaining the prayers and commandments that Caridad tried to teach her, reciting them wearily just as she had at Sunday mass at the Cuban sugar mill. Bartola, the old aunt, grew tired of listening to her faltering morning repetitions as she sat in the dilapidated chair she’d brought with her from the other side of the alley and set up beside the window in Milagros’s house as if it were her prize possession. One morning she solved the problem with a shout.

“Sing them, girl! You’ll remember them if you sing them.”

From that day on, the apathetic stammering turned into ditties and Milagros began to learn prayers and precepts to the rhythm of fandangos,
seguidillas, zarabandas
and
chaconas.

It was precisely that natural facility, that talent she had for absorbing music and songs, that brought her the most problems and heartaches when it came time to learn the Christmas carols she was to sing in Santa Ana.

“Do you know how to read sheet music?” Before Milagros could answer, the choirmaster himself waved his hand through the air when he realized how ridiculous his question was.

“The only thing I know how to read are palms,” replied the young woman. “And I can already see much misfortune on yours.”

Milagros was tense. Every member of the Santa Ana choir was judging
her, and it hadn’t been difficult to imagine what everyone in the choir, the tenor, and the organist—except for the boys, they were all professional musicians—were thinking of her.
What was a barefoot, dirty gypsy girl doing singing Christmas carols in their church?
was what the girl read in their faces.

And what she could now read in the bald, paunchy choirmaster’s was a triumphant expression that transformed into a deafening shout.

“Reading palms? Get out of here!” The man pointed to the exit. “The church is no place for gypsy sorcery! And take your Negress with you!” he added, indicating Caridad, positioned at a distance.

Even La Trianera herself, who now begged for alms openly outside the church while she waited for them, as if the fact that Milagros was going to sing Christmas carols gave her some sort of license, ran to tell her husband about the girl’s expulsion.

“If she were already married to Pedro, I would slap that fickle girl,” she added.

“You’ll have your chance,” assured her husband tersely, rushing to Santa Ana before the parish priest summoned him to be rebuked.

He returned blind with rage: he had had to ask for forgiveness a thousand times and humiliate himself before an incensed cleric. Back in the alley, on that bright winter day, Rafael saw Milagros listening entranced to Pedro, as if nothing had happened. He decided against approaching her then and sought the help of Inocencio, who returned with him to where the young couple was chatting.