Free The Barefoot Queen by Ildefonso Falcones Page B

harshly when he saw her enter the courtyard. He still had a hammer in his hand and wore a leather apron over his bare, sweaty chest.
    Melchor stood up tall with the wineskin still hanging over his back off his staff, Caridad motionless behind him, unable to understand the gypsy tongue. Since when did he owe any explanations to surly José Carmona? The challenge lasted a few seconds.
    “She sings well,” was all he finally said.

The Carmona family’s blacksmith shop was located on the lower level of a cluster of apartments in the San Miguel alley. It was a three-story rectangular building built around a tiny courtyard with a well in the center. The workshop and the families who lived on the upper floors all made use of its water. However, getting to the well often proved a difficult task, since both the courtyard and the corridors that surrounded it were used to store the coal for the forge and the iron scraps the gypsies gathered to work with: a ton of twisted and rusty pieces piled up because, unlike the Sevillian
payos
who had to buy their raw material in Vizcaya, the gypsies weren’t subject to any ordinances or the inspectors who controlled product quality. Behind the courtyard with the well, through a narrow corridor covered by the roof of the first floor, was a small courtyard with a latrine and, beside that, a small room originally used as a laundry; that was the room Melchor Vega had taken as his own when he returned from the galleys.
    “You can stay there.” The gypsy pointed Caridad to the floor of the little courtyard, between the latrine and the entrance to his room. “You have to keep drinking this remedy until you are cured. Then you can go,” he added, handing her the wineskin. “The last thing I need is for Old María to think I didn’t take care of you!”
    Melchor went into his room and closed the door behind him. Caridadsat on the ground, with her back resting against the wall, and organized her scant belongings carefully: the bundle to her right, the wineskin to her left, the straw hat in her hands.
    She was no longer trembling and her fever had subsided. She vaguely remembered the first moments of her stay in the hut in the gypsy settlement: first they gave her water, but they didn’t allow her to sate her burning thirst. They put cold compresses on her forehead until Old María knelt beside the mattress and forced her to drink the thick concoction of boiled barley. Behind her, two women prayed aloud, speaking over each other, entrusting themselves to countless virgins and saints as they drew crosses in the air.
    “Leave the saint worship for the
payos
!” ordered Old María.
    Then Caridad fell into a restless, confused stupor that transported her to the work on the plantation, the whip, the feasts on the holidays, and all the old gods she used to sing and plead to appeared before her. The Yoruba drums echoed frenetically in her head, just as they had in the sleeping quarters on the plantation in Cuba. She danced in a dream coven that terrified her, and saw the Negroes beating on the skins of kettledrums, their laughter and obscene gesturing, the other slaves who accompanied them with claves and maracas, their faces shouting frantically inches from hers, all waiting for the saint to come down and mount Caridad. And Oshún, her Orisha, finally did mount her, but in her dream it wasn’t to accompany her in a joyful, sensual dance as the goddess usually did, but rather she forced Caridad with her movements and gestures toward a hell where all the gods in the universe battled.
    She awoke suddenly, startled, soaked in sweat, and found herself amid the silence of the settlement in the dead of night.
    “Girl,” said Old María before long. “I don’t know what you were dreaming about, but it scares me just to imagine it.”
    Then Caridad noticed that the gypsy woman seated beside her was gripping her hand tightly. The touch of that rough, wrinkled hand calmed her. It had been so long since