Free The Barefoot Queen by Ildefonso Falcones

there was nothing that irked the royal officials more. Besides, they had sought out the help of a nobleman from Antequera and he had committed to intercede on his behalf. Tomás smiled, as did Melchor: there was always some nobleman who gave them a hand. They liked to protect them. Why did they do it? They had discussed it on numerous occasions: it was as if their favors made those men of noble birth feel somewhat gypsy, as if they wanted to show that they weren’t like most people and they shared the darker race’s lust for freedom; as if they were taking part in a way of life and a spirit denied them in their routine and rigid customs. Someday they would ask for the favor to be repaid, asking them to sing and dance for them at a party in some sumptuous palace, and they would invite their friends and peers to boast of their illicit connections.
    “We’ve had news that about a month ago,” interjected Uncle Mateo, “near Ronda, the brotherhood confiscated El Arrugado’s animals …”
    “Who’s El Arrugado?” asked Melchor.
    “The one who’s always hunched over, Josefa’s son, the cousin of—”
    “Yeah, yeah,” interrupted Melchor.
    “They took a horse and two donkeys from him.”
    “Has he got them back?”
    “Not the little donkeys. The soldiers kept them and then sold them. They sold the horse too, but El Arrugado followed the buyer and got it back the next night. They say it was pretty easy: the
payo
who bought it let it loose in a pen, all he had to do was go in and get it. El Arrugado liked that horse.”
    “Is it that good a horse?” asked Melchor after a new sip of wine.
    “No way!” answered his brother. “It’s a miserable nag that walks stiff as a board, but since they’re two of a kind, all hunched over … well, he’s comfortable with it.”
    Other family members, they explained later to Melchor, had taken sanctuary in a chapel on the road to Osuna more than seven days earlier.They were being chased by the Chief Magistrate of Málaga because some
payos
from Málaga had informed on them.
    “Now, as usual, they’re all fighting and arguing,” reported Uncle Basilio. “The magistrate wants them for himself; the Holy Brotherhood has showed up at the chapel claiming the gypsies are theirs; the priest says he doesn’t want to get involved; and the vicar, whom the priest called, alleges that the law cannot take them from the sanctuary and that they should take the matter to the bishop.”
    “It’s always the same,” commented Melchor, remembering the times he himself had taken refuge in churches or monasteries. “Are they going to take them out?”
    “Doesn’t matter,” answered Uncle Basilio. “For the moment they’re letting them argue among themselves. They all have cold immunity, so they’ll plead that when they come out and they’ll have to set them free again. They’ll lose their weapons and their animals, but not much more.”
    It was already dawn. Melchor yawned. The nephew and his family were sleeping on the straw mattresses and the gypsy settlement was silent.
    “Should we continue in the morning?” he suggested.
    The others nodded and got up. Melchor just placed one foot on the table and pushed backward until the chair, on just two of its legs, rested against a wall of the hut. Then he closed his eyes as he listened to his relatives leaving. Cold immunity, he smiled to himself before sleep overtook him. The
payos
always fell into the same traps, which was the only way his people, so persecuted and vilified throughout the country, were able to survive. When a gypsy who had taken sanctuary knew that, if he were removed, the sentence would be little or nothing, he would sometimes get the magistrate to remove him by force, thus violating church asylum. From that point on, if the magistrate or the constables didn’t return him to the same place he had been removed from, he now enjoyed what was known as cold immunity. And they didn’t ever do it. So the next time