Read Online The Barefoot Queen by Ildefonso Falcones - Free Book Online

seconds passed before Basilio and Ana saw Melchor purse his lips and stroke the girl’s hair with a firm hand. They knew then what his decision was: to submit to the council for the good of the family.
    That girl who had thwarted a bloodbath was now dancing and singing in the San Miguel alley. From the door to her house, Ana enjoyed watching her daughter; she found her lovely, proud, decisive, ardent as she danced flirtatiously with a young man.… Suddenly the woman shook her head violently and moved out of the doorway, confused. The young man was watching her daughter’s dance steps unenthusiastically, indifferent to her effort, cold, almost mocking. Didn’t Milagros realize? That young man.… Ana squinted her eyes to focus her vision. He was older than her daughter, dark, attractive, strong, tough. And Milagros dancedunaware of her partner’s disdain; she was smiling, her eyes twinkled, radiating sensuality. Then, positioned behind the chairs that surrounded the embers of a bonfire, she saw La Trianera, who was clapping with a mocking expression of victory at the girl—a Vega, Melchor’s granddaughter—displaying her obvious desire, in public, for one of her grandsons: Pedro García.
    “Milagros!” screamed Ana, running toward her.
    She grabbed her daughter by the shoulder and shook her until she stopped dancing. La Trianera’s mocking expression became a smile. When Milagros seemed about to respond, her mother silenced any complaint with a couple more shakes. The guitarists had almost stopped strumming when La Trianera urged them to continue. Some men approached. Young Pedro García, emboldened by his grandmother’s attitude, wanted to humiliate the Vega women even further and he continued dancing around Milagros as if her mother’s intervention was nothing more than a trivial setback. Ana saw him coming, let go of her daughter and, just as the gypsy approached, extended her arm and smacked him with the back of her hand. Pedro García stumbled. Milagros opened her mouth but no words came out. The guitars were silent. La Trianera got up. Other gypsy women from various families came over quickly.
    Before they got into a fight, the men got between them.
    “Bitch!”
    “Hussy!”
    “Wretch!”
    “Slut!”
    They insulted each other as they struggled to get away from the men, pushing them away to get to the other women, Ana more than anyone. More men came over, José Carmona among them, and they managed to contain the situation. José shook his wife the way she had their daughter; then, with the help of two relatives, he managed to drag her to the other side of the alley.
    “Strumpet!” Ana kept shouting as they pulled her off, wrenching her head round to direct her words at La Trianera.
    THE GYPSY settlement by the grounds of the Carthusian monastery was just a bunch of squalid huts built with clay and pieces of timber—someno more than simple lean-tos made of reeds and fabric—that had gradually extended from the first ones built up against the wall surrounding the monks’ land, between the monastery and Triana. Melchor was well received. Many greeted him in the street as he passed; others peeked from the doors of those windowless shacks. The meager glow of candles illuminating the inside of the houses and a few fires that were lit along the street fought against the shadows.
    “Melchor, I have a donkey the tobacco patrol could never catch you on. Interested?” exclaimed an old gypsy seated on a chair at the door to a hut, while he pointed to one of the many pack animals tied or staked along the street.
    Melchor didn’t even look at the animal. “For that I’d have to carry him on my shoulders,” he answered, dismissively swatting the air.
    They both laughed.
    Caridad was walking behind Melchor, her bare feet sinking into the mire. For a moment she thought she wouldn’t have the strength to continue through the mud; she was tormented by fever, her throat smarted and her chest burned. Had that man