The Barefoot Queen

by Ildefonso Falcones

  “What is my face like?” she suddenly asked, uneasy, in the basement where they were packed, without addressing anyone in particular.

  They were slow to answer.

  “Look at mine and you’ll know.”

  The reply came from a gypsy from Ronda. Ana remembered her from Málaga: a beautiful woman with blue-black hair and bright, inquisitive, slanted eyes the same color. She didn’t want to see herself reflected in that woman’s face, in her wrinkles, in her dark teeth and jutting cheekbones, in the purple circles that now encircled her dulled eyes.

  “Swine!” she cursed.

  Many of the gypsies who found themselves near her looked at each other, recognizing themselves in the other women, sharing in silence the pain over the beauty and youth that had been taken from them.

  “Now look at me, Ana Vega!”

  It was a wasted old woman, almost bald and toothless. Her name was Luisa and she belonged to the Vega family, like about twenty of the gypsies who had been arrested in the La Cartuja settlement. Ana looked at her. Is that my fate? she wondered. Was that what old Luisa was trying to tell her? She forced herself to smile at the old woman.

  “Take a good look at me,” insisted the woman. “What do you see?”

  Ana opened her hands in a gesture of incomprehension, not knowing what to respond.

  “Pride?” asked the old woman as a reply.

  “What good does it do us?” Ana asked with a disdainful shrug.

  “It makes you the most beautiful woman in Spain. Yes,” affirmed Luisa at the indifference with which Ana received the compliment. “The King and Ensenada can separate us from our men so we stop having children. That is what they say they are trying to do, right? Finish off our race. They can beat us and starve us to death; they can even steal our beauty; but they can never take away our pride.”

  The gypsies had stopped feeling sorry for themselves and held their heads up high as they listened to the old woman.

  “Don’t back down, Ana Vega. You have defended us. You have fought for the others and they lashed your back for it. That is your beauty! Don’t look for any other, girl. Someday they will forget about us, the gypsies, as has always happened. I won’t see it.”

  The old woman was quiet for a moment and no one dared to disrupt her silence.

  “When that day comes, they shouldn’t have managed to break us, do you all understand that?” she added in a hoarse voice, running her sad gaze over the basement. “Do it for me, for those left behind.”

  That same night, Ana ran to see the children who were coming back from working the fields.

  “You promised me—” the sentry started to complain.

  “Frías, never trust a gypsy’s word,” she interrupted him, as her eyes searched for Salvador among the others.

  “We’re leaving.”

  It was night; the bells had already sounded the call to prayer. Milagros gave a start and turned toward her husband, who had suddenly appeared in the window opening. When she heard his tone of voice, Bartola, who was whiling away the time sitting lazy and insolent in a chair, hastened to take refuge in the room where the little girl slept.

  “Where are you planning on going at this time of night?” inquired Milagros.

  “We have an appointment.”

  “With who?”

  “A party?”

  “I didn’t know … what party?”

  “Stop asking questions and come with me!”

  On the street a carriage pulled by two richly harnessed mules was waiting for them. Its door boasted an engraved coat of arms picked out in gold. The coachman was waiting in the driver’s seat with two liveried footmen standing on the ground with lanterns in their hands.

  “And the others?” asked Milagros, surprised.

  “They are waiting for us there. Get in.” He pushed her from behind.

  “Where …?”

  “Get in!”

  Milagros sat on a hard seat upholstered in red silk. The mules began to trot as soon as Pedro closed the door.

  “Who’s throwing this party?” she insisted as Pedro settled into the seat in front of her.

  He remained silent. Milagros searched in the gaze her husband fixed on her and a strong shiver blended in with the carriage’s jolting; it was an inexpressive gaze, which didn’t show hatred, bitterness, excitement or even ambition. A few days had passed since their argument about the Marquis of Torre Girón. Pedro had stopped sleeping at home and she fantasized even more frequently about the attentions of that nobleman who had treated her with such courtesy when the puppeteers were performing. Marina encouraged her, day after day.

  “Aren’t you going to answer me?”

  Pedro didn’t.

  Milagros saw that they were crossing the Plaza Mayor; from then on the carriage turned again and again through the dark, silent network of narrow, tortuous streets that surrounded the royal palace under construction. The carriage stopped in front of a large house whose side door was lit up by one of the servants when she stepped out. What she could clearly see, as soon as she set her bare foot on the ground and looked up, was that there wasn’t going to be any sort of party celebrated there: the place was deserted and in silence, the house gloomy with no lights in the windows.

  She was struck by panic. “What are you going to do to me?”

  The question was drowned in a sob when Pedro pushed her inside and shoved her behind a servant with a candelabrum through hallways, passing rooms and going up stairs; only the men’s footsteps and Milagros’s muffled crying broke the silence that enveloped the mansion. Soon they stopped in front of a door; the candlelight reflected in shards on the hardwood panels.

  The servant knocked delicately on the door and, without waiting for a response, opened it. Milagros could make out a luxurious bedroom. She waited for the servant to enter, but he moved aside to let her in. She tried to do the same so that Pedro would precede her, but he pushed her again.

  At that moment the impassive look her husband had been giving her over the entire journey took on hair-raising meaning; Milagros understood the error she had made in following him: Pedro wasn’t going to allow her to go to the arms of the marquis. He thought that one day or another she would become his lover and stop singing for other noblemen; then he would lose control of her … and her money. Foreseeing that, her husband had anticipated the events. He had sold her!

  “No …” she managed to implore, trying to back away.

  Pedro shoved her violently and closed the door.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  Milagros shifted her gaze to the immense canopied bed on the opposite side of the room where, on an armchair, beside a fireplace of delicate lines in pink marble, sat a large man, with a pearly face and straw-like hair, dressed in a simple white shirt, britches and stockings. She knew him from some parties. How could she forget those cheeks that seemed to shine? He was the Baron of San Glorio. The man placed a pinch of snuff on the back of one hand, sniffed, sneezed, wiped his nose with a handkerchief and invited her with a simple gesture to sit on the armchair in front of him.

  Milagros didn’t move. She was trembling. She turned her head toward the door.

  “You can’t do anything,” the nobleman warned her with a calmness that frightened her even more. “You have a husband who is too greedy … and a spendthrift. A terrible combination.”

  While the baron spoke, Milagros ran toward a picture window and threw open the heavy drapery.

  “We’re three stories up,” he warned. “Would you prefer to orphan your daughter? Come here with me,” he added.

  Milagros, cornered, looked around the huge room.

  “Come,” he insisted, “let’s chat for a while.”

  She turned to inspect the door.

  The baron sighed, got up in annoyance, headed over there and opened it wide: a couple of servants were posted behind it.

  “Shall we sit down?” he suggested. “I would like …”

  “Pedro!” Milagros managed to shou
t between sobs. “For your daughter!”

  “Your husband is kissing his gold,” spat out the baron as he closed the door. “That is the only thing he cares about and you know it. Wasn’t he the one who brought you here?”

  The little hope that Milagros had been able to maintain about Pedro vanished at the crudeness of the baron’s words. Money! She knew it. Still, hearing it from the mouth of an aristocrat was like being stabbed with a knife.

  “Barefoot Girl,” the baron interrupted her reflections, “my servants would pounce on you like animals in heat, and your husband is nothing more than a vulgar ruffian who sells you like a whore. In this house, the only man who is going to treat you gallantly is me.” He let a moment pass. “Sit down. Let’s drink and chat before …”

  The gob of spit Milagros launched landed on one of the baron’s legs. The man looked at his stocking; when he lifted his face, his pearly cheeks were red with rage. Only when she had him in front of her, infuriated, snorting, did the gypsy girl realize his true size: he was more than a head taller than her and must have weighed twice what she did.

  The baron slapped her.

  “Disgusting pig, son of a bitch, heartless bastard!” screamed Milagros as she tried to hit him with her fists and legs.

  The baron let out a laugh and slapped her again with incredible strength. Milagros staggered and for a second thought she was going to lose consciousness. When she began to recover her balance, the man ripped off her shirt.

  “You prefer to act like a whore?” he shouted. “So be it! I paid a fortune for tonight!”

  He beat her to the floor. Milagros’s screams and her struggles against his removing her clothes were no use. She bit him. She could taste his blood; he, blinded, seemed not to notice her teeth. Stripped of her clothes, which were ripped to shreds, the baron dragged her to the bed, lifted her up and hurled her onto it. Then he started to take off his clothes with feigned calmness, placing himself between the bed and the picture windows, in case the young woman was capable of throwing herself out through them. For a second, that possibility crossed her mind, but in the end she sank her face into the fluffy bedspread and burst into sobs.

  “GET OUT of here!”

  The shout came from the bed, from which the aristocrat had watched her efforts to cover herself with her destroyed clothes, which were scattered across the room. “Would you rather my servants dress you?” he had mocked when he’d had kicked her out of the bed. She showed similar indecisiveness now in front of the bedroom door. She was crying. Pedro would be outside, and she didn’t know how to face him after what had happened. She was overcome with conflicting feelings: guilt, hatred, disgust …

  The nobleman’s shouts silenced her doubts. “Didn’t you hear me? Get out!”

  The naked man made as if to get up. Milagros opened the door. Her husband leapt on her, pushing aside the two servants and giving her a smack that spun her head.

  “Why?” she managed to ask.

  The cameo! Pedro held up the jewel the Marquis of Torre Girón had given her.

  “No …” she tried to explain.

  “You are nothing more than a harlot,” he interrupted. “And that’s how you will live from now on.”

  That night Pedro hit her again. And he insulted her; he called her a whore a thousand different ways, as if trying to convince himself that that was what she was. Milagros accepted the punishment: her husband’s violence distracted her mind from the memories; the pain transported her far from the touch of the baron’s hands on her body, his kisses and sighs, his panting as he penetrated her like an animal blinded by lust.

  “Go on! Kill me!”

  Unhinged, she didn’t hear her daughter crying in the next room, nor the shouts of the neighbors beating on the walls and threatening to call the patrol. Pedro did notice the neighbors’ threats: he’d lifted his hand to smack her again, but let it drop. He had to preserve Milagros’s face; that was what the audience admired.

  “Strumpet,” he muttered before walking toward the door that led to the staircase, “I have no intention of finishing you off. You won’t be so lucky,” he added, his back to her. “I swear you will be dead in life!”

  The next day Milagros sang and danced at the Príncipe, though the emotions that filled her were very different from the ones she usually felt when she stepped onto the stage. She searched for the Marquis of Torre Girón in his box; he wasn’t there, but some flowers did arrive, which she smelled, heartbroken.

  Unfortunately for her, the Baron of San Glorio was soon boasting about his conquest, while keeping the price quiet. Milagros found that out a few days later, when she discovered that the marquis was in the theater. He would be able to help her! She had thought about it during her sleepless nights. She had to escape with her daughter, leave Pedro, get away from the Garcías! Otherwise, what would they do to her next?

  “His excellency says,” Don José informed her, when he returned from delivering the message that she needed to see him, “that only the King is above him.”

  Milagros shook her head, not understanding that reply.

  “Girl, you made a mistake,” the company’s director explained. “The grandees of Spain never take second-best, and you, by agreeing to lie with the baron, have become that.”

  Agreeing! Milagros didn’t hide her tears from any of the comic players who moved about the dressing rooms and looked at her, some out of the corner of their eyes and others, Celeste among them, blatantly. Agreeing?

  “It’s a lie,” she sobbed. “I have to tell the marquis …”

  “Forget about it,” interrupted Don José. “Whatever happened, the marquis won’t see you. He doesn’t owe you anything—or does he?”

  Celeste, who was milling around by the dressing rooms, waited for a response that Milagros didn’t want to give her.

  Just like in Seville, when years back she had gone to the palace of the Count of Fuentevieja to beg for her parents’ freedom. Noblemen, they were all the same …

  The marquis’s refusal put an end to her hopes. She remembered her grandfather, her mother, Old María … They would have known what to do. Although her husband seemed to know as well, showing up that same afternoon in the house on Amor de Dios Street, when Milagros returned.

  “What happened to your marquis?” he taunted in greeting. “Did he fight with the other nobleman over you?”

  Her husband’s cynical smile infuriated her. “I will denounce you.”

  He, as if expecting that threat, as if he had expressly sought it out, smiled with a gleam of triumph in his eyes; Milagros knew his reply before he even spat it at her. She had thought of it herself.

  “And what will you say? That an aristocrat paid to have you? Do you think any judge will believe such an accusation? The baron can have any woman he wants.”

  “Not me, not ever!”

  “A gypsy?” Pedro let out a hearty laugh. “A comic player? You gypsies are vile and dishonest, libertines and adulterers. The King says so, and it is written in his laws. And if that weren’t enough, you are also an actress. Everyone knows the shamelessness of the players, their love affairs are common gossip, like yours with the marquis …”

  “It’s not true!”

  “What does it matter? Do you know what they say about you and that marquis in the taverns of Madrid? Do you want me to tell you? There is even a song about the two of you.” He paused and continued in a cold voice. “Go ahead. Denounce me. They will condemn you for adultery without thinking twice. The baron will make sure it’s for life … and I will back him up.”

  So she continued going to the parties and singing and dancing at the Príncipe, dissatisfied, unhappy with herself, although to her surprise the audience rewarded her with applause and cheers, which she received with apathy. Then she went home, where Bartola watched over her, not even leaving her alone in her own bedroom. “Orders from your husband,” replied the old woman rudely when she remonstrated with her. “Talk to him about it.” And she followed her with María
if she went out on the street. The little money she was allowed vanished, and the García woman, just like Reyes in Triana, interrupted her conversations in the market, on the street or in the sweetshop on León Street, where she liked to buy treats, and put an end to them.

  “You don’t look well, Milagros,” commented the sweetshop owner once as she served her a couple of butter biscuits from the bakery. “Is something going on?”

  Her stammering response was interrupted by Bartola.

  “Mind your own business, nosy!” she exclaimed.

  A MONTH and a half had passed since the night the baron raped her, when Pedro grabbed her by the neck and practically dragged her out of the bedroom. Downstairs two chisperos were waiting, along with some of the guitarists who usually accompanied them to parties and a couple of women she didn’t know. The women received her with indifference. Pedro had mentioned another party before pushing her down the stairs. Who were those women?

  She soon found out. She was singing and dancing for a small group of five aristocrats; they were in another large stately home with its display of furniture, carpets and all types of ornaments. At one point they interrupted the performance with passionate applause from their armchairs. The dance isn’t over, thought Milagros in surprise, why are they applauding? She turned toward the new women dancing behind her: one of them had bared her breasts. A cold sweat soaked her entire body. She began to stammer; then she stopped singing and dancing, but the others continued to the rhythm of the guitar and the handclapping. The other woman also opened her shirt and revealed her large wobbly breasts. Milagros moved away from them and searched for a corner.

  “What could it matter to you at this point, whore?” said Pedro, stepping in her path and pushing her back toward the center.

  A couple of noblemen hooted and laughed.

  “Now you, Barefoot Girl!” shouted another.

  Milagros was still in front of them, the frenetic strumming of the guitar and the clapping thundering in her ears. She tried to think, but the racket overwhelmed her.

  “Take off your clothes, gypsy!”