She had been cooped up there for five days. There was nothing she could do in that disgusting little room she shared with a bricklayer, his sister, who claimed she worked washing clothes in the Manzanares River, and a third guest who was surely involved in shady activities but maintained, as fervently as the washerwoman, that he was a cutter, though he didn’t specify whether he worked in a slaughterhouse or in a tannery.

“I’m going to look for the notary. Don’t leave the hostel,” Melchor had whispered to her the first morning, when the other guests were still stretching. “Don’t talk to anyone or tell them about me and especially not about the snuff.”

He started to leave but then stopped. He fingered the hilt of his knife and launched a murderous look at the others, including the washerwoman, all three of whom had their eyes glued on the couple. Then he turned and kissed Caridad full on the mouth.

“Did you understand, morena? I might take a while, but I will be back, no doubt about it. Wait for me and keep an eye on the bed—don’t let Pelayo’s friend sell it as ‘half with clean.’ ”

Caridad didn’t know what “half with clean” meant and Melchor didn’t explain before heading down the stairs. It was an expression coined in the underbelly of Madrid, populated with beggars and layabouts, criminals and all sorts of people without resources who drifted through the big city, some waiting for an actual royal favor—revenue, a job in the administration, the results of a lawsuit—others waiting on some risky business that would line their pockets, and the rest looking to pilfer or sell junk, when not just to outright steal. Many of them, come nightfall, would head to one of the houses where for two bits they could rent half of a bed they shared with someone clean: that was someone without lice, scabies or ringworm.

Madrid was unable to absorb the constant immigration. Enclosed by the wall that surrounded it, beyond which it was forbidden to build, two-thirds of the property was split between the Crown and the Church; the remaining third, in addition to what those two institutions decided to lease, had to be fought over by the almost one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants who packed the capital at mid-century. The houses they fought over were poorly put together, with tiny dark rooms devoid of any comforts, all the result of the construction of “houses of malice,” a scheme that Madrileños had used in previous centuries to get around the lodging privileges that forced them to give the King, free of charge, a part of their dwellings for the use of the members of the court. So, despite the royal proclamations regarding the quality of the buildings that should adorn the kingdom’s capital, more than half of the ten thousand houses erected in Madrid the century before were only one story high, therefore ineligible to welcome ministers or servants of the Crown. Already well into the eighteenth century, when the lodging privileges were replaced by economic contributions, the houses of Madrid were renovated and the single-story buildings were reconstructed or simply raised to accommodate the immigration that continued to arrive in the capital.

These secret hostels, like the one where Melchor and Caridad were staying, were born out of that need. While the city had enough taverns and bars, there weren’t many public hostels, and they were both expensive and constantly watched over and regulated by the royal magistrates and the constables during their rounds. That was why the secret hostels sprung up and, although no one knew for sure how many there were, it was known that they were all dirty and messy like the little attic room where Caridad whiled away the hours. She didn’t even have a cigar to smoke and calm her hunger, which was far from sated by the watery, rotten stew that Alfonsa fed her guests. The chickpeas, turnips, onions and heads of garlic didn’t seem to have left any room for pork, mutton, beef or chicken.

Melchor had left the hostel five days ago and Caridad was gripped by anguish. Had something happened to him? Milagros and her mother had faded in her mind as the days passed. Melchor, Melchor and Melchor: the gypsy was all she thought about! He had told her not to leave the hostel, she reminded herself over and over again as she paced up and down the little room, oppressed between those walls, disgusted by the stench that came up from the street. Her only contact with the outside was the hustle and bustle and traffic that she could hear through a little window far above her head. She cursed that useless window. She sat on the bed. He had told her to keep an eye on it … She smiled sadly. Where did you go, damn gypsy? She could go out, but she didn’t know where to go or what she would do. She couldn’t go to the constables to report the disappearance of a gypsy smuggler. Besides, Melchor had told her not to talk about him to anyone. Even the gleam of the fake sapphire he had given her, and which she kept clenched in her fist, seemed to have faded.

Over the course of those days, the bricklayer and the woman he said was his sister had given up trying to get more than a monosyllabic answer out of her, but Juan, the cutter, insisted on wheedling her and interrogating her over and over, persistent despite the silence and lowered gaze with which Caridad received his questions.

“Where is your master? What business brought him to Madrid?”

The cutter surprised Caridad by returning to the hostel the morning of the fifth day after the other two had already left. Juan was a middle-aged man, tall, bald, with a pockmarked face and teeth as black as the long nails that extended from his fingers and which at that moment were in sharp contrast to the large loaf of white bread he was holding. Caridad couldn’t keep her eyes from drifting briefly toward the loaf: she was hungry. He noticed her gaze.

“Do you want a piece?”

Caridad hesitated. What was the cutter doing there?

“I bought it at the San Luis junction,” said the man as he broke it in two and offered her one of the halves. “You and I could get a lot like this one. Take it,” he insisted, “I’m not going to do anything to you.”

Caridad didn’t do so. The cutter approached her.

“You are a desirable woman. There are few real black women in Spain, they’ve all got whiter over time.”

She backed up a few steps until her back hit the wall. She saw the cutter’s eyes light up, boring into her before he could.

“Here, take the bread.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Take it!”

Caridad obeyed and grabbed it with the hand that didn’t hold the fake sapphire.

“That’s it. Why were you going to refuse? It cost me good money. Eat.”

She nibbled the half-loaf. The cutter watched her do so for a few seconds before trying to grab one of her breasts. He didn’t manage to; Caridad had foreseen it and batted his hand away. The cutter persisted and she rebuffed him again.

“You want to make it hard for me?” muttered the man, as he threw the bread onto one of the beds, visibly excited, and rubbed his hands together. His black teeth stood out in his lewd smile.

The bread and the sapphire fell to the floor when Caridad put her arms out to repel the cutter’s onslaught. After a struggle, she managed to stop him by grabbing his wrists. Her own reaction surprised her and made her hesitate: it was the first time she had challenged a white man! He took advantage of her indecision: he freed himself, shouted something incomprehensible and smacked her. It didn’t hurt. She looked him in the eyes. He hit her again and she kept looking at him. The woman’s passive reaction to his violence excited the cutter even more. Caridad thought that he was going to hit her again, but instead he held her and started to bite her neck and ears. She tried to get away from him, but couldn’t. The man, frenetic, grabbed her curly hair and searched out her mouth, her lips …

All of a sudden he let her go and doubled over. She tilted her head to one side, as if she wanted to listen more carefully to the long muffled wail that came from the cutter’s throat. She had seen her friend María—the mulatta she sang with—do it one Sunday back at the sugar factory: María had allowed the Negro harassing her to get close, holding her and getting excited, and then she had jammed her knee into his testicles. He had doubled over and howled just like the cutter, with both hands grabbing his crotch. Caridad breathed heavily while she searched for her sapphire. She knelt and extended her arm to grab it; her hands were trembling. She couldn’t control them. The rage seemed to want to burst from inside her. She grabbed the stone and the bread and got up, confused at the whole sequence of new feelings inside her.

“I’ll kill you!”

She stared at the cutter: he was recovering and almost able to stand up straight. He would do it, he would kill her; his contorted features made that clear; the knife that glittered in one of his hands galvanized her as if he was already about to stab her. The hostel owner was her only hope of salvation! Caridad ran downstairs. The door of the woman’s apartment was locked. She beat hard on it, but her blows were drowned out by the screams of the cutter who was coming down behind her.

“Whore! I’m going to cut your throat!”

Caridad leapt down the last flight of stairs. She ran into two women as she burst out onto Peligros Street, a narrow thoroughfare no more than five paces wide. The women’s complaints merged with the bedlam that she’d been listening to for five days, which now exploded in all its rawness. She looked both ways, back and forth repeatedly, not knowing what to do. One of the women tried to pick up the countless chickpeas that had scattered on the ground when they crashed into each other; the other screamed insults at her. Onlookers crowded around to watch the scene. So did the cutter, who had stopped in front of the building. They were separated by barely three steps. Their eyes met. Caridad tried to calm down: he wouldn’t dare to kill her in public. She saw in the man’s resigned face, as he put away the knife and brought a hand to his chin, that he had reached the same conclusion. Caridad let out a snort, as if she had been holding it in since she started to descend the staircase.

“Thief!” then echoed between the buildings. “My bread! She stole my bread!”

Caridad’s gaze ran from the half-loaf of bread, still in her hand, to the cutter, who was smiling.

“Get the thief!”

The shout came from behind her back and stopped her attempting to deny the accusation. Someone tried to grab her arm. She got away. The woman picking up chickpeas looked at her and the one who was insulting her jumped on her, as did the cutter. Caridad dodged the woman and pushed her against the cutter, taking advantage of the momentary confusion to escape and rush down the street.

The others chased after her. She ran, blindly. She bumped into men and women, avoiding others and shoving aside those who tried to stop her. The noise and the shouts of those trying to catch up to her spurred her on in a reckless race. She got to the end of Peligros Street and found herself on a wide avenue. There she was almost run over by a luxurious carriage pulled by two saddled mules. From the driver’s seat, the coachman swore at her as he cracked his whip in her direction. Caridad tripped. More carriages were passing: coaches, calashes and curious litters with a mule in front and another behind. Caridad snaked through them until she found another side street and ran down it. She could still hear the shouting; she wasn’t aware that she had already left it far behind.

They were no longer chasing her. It wasn’t worth the bother for a common darkie who’d stolen a piece of bread. So the cutter found himself in the middle of Alcalá Street surrounded by all kinds of carriages, drivers and footmen. Those accompanying noblemen were dressed in livery; the others, escorting those who had obtained royal permission to use coaches but weren’t noble, wore none. The shrieks with which he had been urging on the mob he thought was with him drowned in his throat when he saw the scornful looks he was getting from most of the drivers and footmen who walked alongside the carriages. He, a dirty, common ruffian, had more to lose if he drew attention to himself there, among the grandees.

“Step aside!” shouted out a driver in warning.

One of the footmen made as if to come at him. The cutter acted as though nothing had happened and disappeared whence he had come.

Caridad only stopped her frantic race when she could hardly breathe anymore and the pressure in her chest grew unbearable. She stopped, leaned her hands on her knees and started coughing. She held back a heave between coughs. She turned her head and could see only some people who looked curiously before continuing on their way, indifferent. She stood up and tried to catch her breath. In front of her, at the end of a narrow street, rose two towers, one on each side, crowned by spires with crosses. The one on the left also had a belfry: a church. She thought, before glancing behind her again, that she could take refuge there. No one was following her, but she didn’t know where she was. She closed her eyes tightly and felt the accelerated beating of her heart in her temples. She felt as though she had crossed all of Madrid. She was a long way from the hostel and didn’t know how to get back there. She didn’t know where the hostel was. She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know where Melchor was. She didn’t know …

Right before her, a few steps away, she saw an iron gate onto a large courtyard behind the church. It was open. She headed toward it, wondering if they would allow her into that temple. She was just a barefoot, sweaty Negress dressed in slave’s rags. What would she tell the priest if he asked questions? That she was fleeing because they accused her of stealing bread? She still carried the half-loaf in her hands.

A rotten smell, worse even than the streets of Madrid overflowing with excrement thrown from the windows, attacked her senses as she went through the iron gate into the church cemetery. No one was policing the burials at that moment. Maybe it is safer here than in the church, she thought as she hid between a small headstone and a wall of niches. She recognized the stench: it was decomposing corpses, like those of the runaway slaves they sometimes found in the reed beds.

As she bit on the bread the smell of death mixed in with her saliva, so dense she could almost chew it, and she started to reflect on what had happened and think what she could do next. She had time before it got dark, when the ghosts would come out … and there must have been hundreds there.

NOT FAR from the cemetery of the San Sebastián parish, where five days later Caridad would take refuge, was the parish church of Santa Cruz, whose 144-foot-tall tower dominated the small plaza of the same name. It was there where on Holy Saturday, before they were buried in the church cemetery, the Brotherhood of Charity displayed the skulls of those who had been condemned to death and had their throats slit, after rescuing them from the roads where they were left out to intimidate people. The parish of San Ginés took care of the hanged and that of San Miguel was responsible for those executed by garrote.

In the same small Santa Cruz Plaza, beneath its arcades, was the largest market for domestic laborers. There unemployed servants would station themselves, especially wet nurses, waiting for someone to hire them. Madrid needed many wet nurses to nourish the increasingly high number of foundlings and abandoned children, but mostly they were hired by women who didn’t want to nurse their children so their breasts wouldn’t suffer. The “vanities of the boob” was what advocates of mother’s milk called it.

But in that square there was also one of the wholesale tobacconist’s shops that brought the highest profits to the royal tax office, along with the ones in Antón Martín, Rastro and the Puerta del Sol, of the twenty-two spread all over Madrid. The sale of tobacco was complemented by two state warehouses that sold powdered or leaf tobacco wholesale, never in measures of less than a quarter-pound, so only consumers able to afford such a quantity shopped there.

The same morning that Caridad left the hostel, Melchor confirmed that the Santa Cruz tobacconist’s shop, which only sold powder, seemed more like an apothecary for the supply of medicines and remedies than those that sold the popular, unprocessed smoke tobacco used by the humbler classes. In the middle of the counter, in full view—as was required—stood a precision scale to weigh tobacco powder; on the wall shelves were the tin or glazed earthenware vessels that kept it from losing its fragrance, which is what would happen if it were stored in little paper bags, which was strictly forbidden.

Ramón Álvarez, the tobacconist, made a face when he saw the gypsy—his faded yellow dress coat, the hoops in his ears, the thousands of wrinkles that crossed his tanned face and those penetrating eyes—but he reluctantly agreed to talk to him at the insistence of Carlos Pueyo, the old notary public who accompanied him. Pueyo and the tobacconist had already done some deals as shady as they were profitable. Álvarez’s wife took over serving in the shop while Carlos and Melchor followed the tobacconist’s lethargic ascent to the upper floor of the establishment, where he lived.

Any trace of suspicion disappeared when Ramón Álvarez sniffed a sample of Melchor’s snuff. His face lit up at the mere mention of the number of pounds of it the gypsy had.

“You’ll never regret doing business with me,” the notary reproached the tobacconist for his initial reluctance.

Melchor fixed his gaze on the old notary. Those were the very words that had marked the end of their meeting when he had gone to the notary’s office, on Eulogio’s recommendation, to discuss his daughter Ana’s situation in the gypsy prison in Málaga. He’d told the notary about the jar of snuff when negotiating the payment of his fees and those of the fixer who would be needed to intercede with the authorities to free Ana. Fixers are expensive, but they are at home at court and they know who needs to be bought, declared Carlos Pueyo.

At that moment, in that apartment that masked the stench of Madrid’s streets with the aromas of the tobacco that had been stored below for years, Melchor recognized in the tobacconist’s face the same greed the notary had shown.

“Where do you have the snuff?”

The notary had asked the same exact question. The gypsy, with the same gravity, repeated his response: “Don’t worry about that. It is safely hidden away, just like the money you are going to buy it with.”

Ramón Álvarez moved quickly: he knew the market, he knew who would be interested in that outlawed merchandise and, above all, he knew who could pay its high price. He was just a tobacconist, in the service of the Crown, who made a few silver reals a day, like all those whose establishments had a healthy turnover. There were others: those who sold less, or those that, in towns where there wasn’t enough business to support their salary and expenses, were forced by the Crown to provide tobacco in shops that sold other things as well and who got ten percent of the total sold.

While the tobacconists enjoyed a privileged position—they were free of burdens and obligations, they didn’t have to deal with deliveries and pack mules, and couldn’t be called up for military service; they didn’t have to pay tolls on roads, bridges or boats and were protected from wrongs and offenses—those reals weren’t enough to match the ostentatious, luxurious lives of those who enjoyed similar privileges. Madrid was an expensive city, and a shipment of quality snuff like Melchor’s was one of the best deals they could do because it didn’t affect the sales of Spanish tobacco powder.

While the tobacconist collected the money—I’ll have it tonight and we will close the deal, he promised so Melchor didn’t take his business elsewhere—Melchor got ready to go in search of his relatives.

Comadre de Granada Street. He would always remember that name. Surprising: why would a street in the capital have such a strange name? That was where El Cascabelero lived with his family, as did many other gypsies, so if they weren’t living there anymore, he could surely get news of them. He asked for directions. “Downhill. Pretty nearby,” he was told. Comadre de Granada Street belonged to the humble Madrid of the day laborers. Both sides of what was nothing more than a simple, dreary dirt road that ended at the Embajadores gully were lined with wretched low houses, with narrow façades and small patches of garden to the back, when there weren’t other buildings added on, which shared rooms and a back door. Melchor realized that he was going to reveal his presence in Madrid, but the truth was he couldn’t handle the operation alone. They could rob him; just take the jar and kill him.

“Go further up,” indicated a woman after he had gone up and down the street a couple of times without finding the house. “And once you pass Esperancilla Street, it’s the second or third house …”

And even if they didn’t rob him, how was he going to transport the jar to Madrid and get around town with it? He could count on Caridad, but he didn’t want to involve her; he preferred to run the risk of being betrayed. He needed someone else’s help, and it was best if they were relatives, even if very little Vega blood ran through their veins.

Any trace of doubt vanished at the profound looks exchanged between Melchor and El Cascabelero. They grabbed each other by the forearms, and their grasp indicated affection and promised loyalty. They were surrounded by a respectful silence, which told Melchor that his relative had become the patriarch; and El Cascabelero’s mere touch told him that the man was aware of the death sentence hanging over him.

“And Aunt Rosa?” asked Melchor after communicating everything he could with his eyes.

“She passed away,” answered El Cascabelero.

“She was a good gypsy.”

“Yes, she was.”

Melchor greeted the members of El Cascabelero’s extensive family one by one. His sister, a widow. Zoilo, his oldest son, a picador in the bullfights, as his father proudly introduced him before pointing to his daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Two daughters with their respective husbands, one of them with a baby in arms and other little ones hidden behind her legs, and the fourth, Martín, a boy who received his greeting with a look of admiration.

“Are you El Galeote?”

“We’ve been talking about you a lot lately,” acknowledged El Cascabelero as Melchor nodded to the question and patted the boy’s cheek.

Close to twenty people were packed into that small house on Comadre de Granada Street.

As the women prepared the food, Melchor, the patriarch and the other men settled into the small back garden, beneath an overhang, some in rickety chairs, others on simple cushions.

“How old are you?” Melchor asked Martín, who was peeking out through the lace curtain that served as a door to the yard.

“Almost fifteen.”

Melchor looked for El Cascabelero’s consent.

“You are already a gypsy man,” he said when he saw his father nod. “Come with us.”

THAT SAME afternoon, in the notary’s office, Carlos Pueyo assured him that the tobacconist had the money to buy the snuff.

“He’s capable of selling his wife and daughter to get it for tonight,” added the notary when he saw the gypsy’s doubt. “He won’t get much for the wife,” he joked. “But the daughter has a certain charm.”

They agreed to complete the sale after eleven at night, which was the shop’s closing time.

“Where?” asked Melchor.

“In the shop, of course. He has to check the quality, weigh the snuff … Is there any problem with that?” added the notary, seeing that the gypsy was pensive.

There were seven hours until then.

“Not at all,” he confirmed.

Along with El Cascabelero and all the men in his family, including young Martín, Melchor left Madrid through the Toledo Gate. He smiled, thinking about Caridad, when he reached the thicket where the jar was still hidden. You see how it’s there, my Negress? he said to himself while Zoilo and his brothers-in-law dug it up. What would they do after closing the deal? Zoilo and his father had been unequivocal.

“Now that you’ve set foot on Comadre Street, you can be sure that the Garcías know you are in Madrid.”

“Are there Garcías here?”

“Yes. A branch, nephews of El Conde. They came from Triana.”

“It must have been …”

“Around the time you went to the galleys. Your Aunt Rosa hated them. We started to hate them and they hated us.”

“I didn’t want to make problems for you,” said Melchor.

“Melchor,” the patriarch spoke seriously to him, “the Costes and those with us will defend you. Do you want the ghost of your aunt to come beat me at night? The Garcías will think twice before starting trouble.”

Would they defend Caridad as well? When they told him about the sentence they had included the woman, but no one had asked about her: she wasn’t a gypsy. While in Madrid he would always have to be protected by El Cascabelero’s men, and live with them, but he doubted they would be willing to stick their necks out for a Negress.

They whiled away the time until nightfall before returning with the jar. They would leave Madrid, Melchor decided during the wait. He would set the matter of Ana in train and the two of them would go and smuggle tobacco, hand in hand, without joining up with any band. He had never enjoyed running tobacco as much as he had with his Negress in Barrancos! The risk … the danger took on another dimension with the mere possibility that she could be arrested, and that breathed life into him. Yes. That’s what they would do. Every once in a while, he would return to Madrid, alone, and check on the progress of the proceedings to free his daughter.

They reached the capital through a hole in a house that made up part of the wall. They didn’t even pay.

“Another picador,” explained El Cascabelero.

They headed to the Santa Cruz Plaza carrying the jar. If someone on the dark streets of Madrid was tempted to make off with that treasure, they would surely be dissuaded by the entourage he had with him.

After eleven, Melchor and his relatives were upstairs at the tobacco shop, serious and silent, threatening, just like the two escorts the tobacconist had procured. He and his wife checked the quality and weighed the pounds of snuff to their satisfaction. Ramón Álvarez nodded and, in silence, handed Melchor a bag with the money. The gypsy poured the coins out onto a table and counted them. Then he took some gold ones and offered them to the notary.

“I want my daughter Ana free in a month’s time,” he demanded.

Carlos Pueyo didn’t allow himself to be intimidated, nor did he take the coins.

“Melchor, if you’re looking for miracles, cross the plaza and go into the Santa Cruz church.” They locked gazes for a moment. “I will do what I can,” added the notary. “That’s the most I can promise you. I’ve told you that several times.”

The gypsy hesitated. He turned toward Zoilo and El Cascabelero, who shrugged. Eulogio had recommended the notary and he seemed like a person who got things done –the quick sale of the snuff was good proof of that—yet, when the moment came to hand over the money, his confidence waned. He thought of Ana locked up in Málaga and his rejection by his beloved granddaughter Milagros, bound to the Garcías in matrimony, and he told himself that the money wasn’t important. He could make thousands if that was what his family needed!

“Agreed,” he conceded.

The tension disappeared as soon as the notary stretched out his hand and Melchor dropped the coins into it. Later, right there, he gave others to the Costes men, not forgetting young Martín, who only dared to take them when his father nodded.

“We have to celebrate!” Zoilo shouted.

“Wine and a party,” added one of his brothers-in-law.

The tobacconist brought his hands to his head and his wife went pale.

“The patrol … the magistrates,” he warned. “If they catch us with the snuff … Silence, I beg of you.”

But the gypsies didn’t quiet down.

“Melchor, there in front,” interjected the notary, pointing to one side, “is the High Court jail. There are constables there and it is where the patrols gather. Except for the palace of Buen Retiro, with the King and his guards, you are choosing the worst place in the city to raise a ruckus.”

Melchor and El Cascabelero understood and silenced the gypsies with hand gestures. Then, ejected by the tobacconist and his wife, they left the building, unable to hold back a few comments and some laughter under their breath.

“In a few days I will come by your office to find out how things are going with my daughter’s case,” Melchor warned the notary, who was sheltering with the tobacconist behind the shop door.

“Take your time,” he answered.

Melchor was about to reply when the door closed and they were left in front of the majestic building—two stories plus the attic and three large towers crowned by spires—that held the jail of the High Court, where they administered justice. They had skirted it when they were carrying the jar and now they realized that the notary was right: the constables came and went around it, with thick clubs in their hands and wearing suits with ruffs, as they had worn in the past, their necks erect and trapped in strips of lined cardboard, which the King had forbidden for the common people.

“Let’s go have some fun with the young folks,” El Cascabelero suggested to Melchor.

El Galeote hesitated. Caridad would be waiting for him.

“Do you have something better to do?” insisted the other.

“Let’s go,” said Melchor, giving in because he was incapable of saying that he had a Negro woman waiting for him, no matter how beautiful she was. After all, they would be leaving Madrid the next day.

They stationed themselves beside one of the walls of the Santa Cruz church where, above Atocha Street, rose an atrium that opened onto the temple’s main portico where some homeless people slept. At a signal from Zoilo they slipped away, going around the atrium and heading down Atocha Street. They knew they were taking a risk: in the streets of Madrid, after midnight (which the bells had announced some time ago), anyone found armed, as they were, and without a lantern lighting their way, should be arrested. However, when they’d passed the atrium of the monastery of the Calced Trinitarians and had left the jail and its many officials far behind, they began to chat carelessly, sure that no patrol would dare confront six gypsies. They laughed loudly as they crossed the small Antón Martín Plaza, where one of the district magistrates was often stationed, and they continued down Atocha Street, carefree, ignoring the drunk men and women, tripping over beggars lying on the ground and even challenging those muffled in long capes, their faces hidden in the night beneath wide-brimmed slouch hats, waiting for some dupe to rob.

At the end of the street, they passed by the General Hospital and entered the Atocha meadow. There, the wall around Madrid didn’t end with the last buildings in the city but opened out behind the gardens and olive groves to surround the Buen Retiro Palace with its many buildings and adjoining gardens. They soon heard the music and commotion: folks from Lavapiés and the Rastro got together in the open fields to drink, dance and have fun.

They had money on them. Melchor’s concern about Caridad disappeared as the party went on, with wine, liquor and even chocolate from Caracas. He heard El Cascabelero demanding the best hot chocolate, with sugar, cinnamon and a few drops of orange-blossom water. They ate the sweets hawked by the street vendors: doughnuts deemed “stupid” or “clever” depending on whether or not they were sweetened in a bath of sugar, egg white and lemon juice; rolled wafers and cream-filled pastries. Seeing that their purses seemed to never grow thin, no matter how many coins came out of them, other gypsy men joined them, along with some women. The men flirted but nothing more, since the patriarch was always vigilant about his daughters’ honor.

“You go ahead,” the others encouraged young Martín, “you’ve got money and you’re single. Enjoy those paya women!”

But he excused himself and remained beside Melchor, the galley slave who had survived torture and smuggled tobacco, who was capable of killing his own son-in-law for the honor of the Vega family. Martín listened attentively to him, laughed at his jokes, felt proud to be able to talk to him. Over the course of the night, Melchor and Martín spoke about the Vegas, about honor, about pride, freedom, the gypsy settlement and about how pleased Melchor would have been if his granddaughter had chosen someone like Martín instead of a García. “She must be confused,” declared Melchor. “For sure,” agreed the boy. Fandangos and seguidillas sounded until dawn, and they were surrounded by all types of people. The gypsies, dressed in their brightly colored clothes, mixed with manolos, in their colorful short jackets and waistcoats, silk sashes, tight britches, white knee socks, shoes with large buckles almost at the tip, striped capes and cloth caps, always armed with a good knife and a perennial cigarette between their lips; and manolas wearing bodices, fine dresses and very flouncy skirts over them, hair nets and mantillas and silk shoes.

Melchor missed the gypsy spirit more than his companions did; the bewitching spell of those cracked voices that spontaneously emerged from the most unexpected corner of the gypsy settlement by La Cartuja. Nevertheless, the joy and hubbub continued echoing in his ears when the music stopped and the light of day found them in a field where only the stragglers remained.

“Are you hungry?” Zoilo asked then.

They sated their appetites at the San Blas inn, also on Atocha Street, amid cartwrights, muleteers and carriers from Murcia and La Mancha who frequented it. Just as they had done during the party the night before, they bragged about their purses and started with toast fried in lard and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. This they followed with chicken stewed in a sauce of its chopped livers until the main dish was ready: a lovely lamb’s head split in half, seasoned with parsley, crushed garlic cloves, salt, pepper, and salt pork strips beneath the gristle, then tied up again to be roasted in sheets of brown paper. They made short work of the brains, tongue, eyes and attached meats, some tender, others gelatinous, all washed down with undiluted Valdepeñas wine, strong and harsh, as befitted that inn filled with dirty, loud-mouthed men who watched them out of the corners of their eyes with obvious envy in their faces and gestures.

“A round for everyone here!” shouted Melchor, sated and tipsy. Before the men had a chance to thank him for his generosity, a shout boomed through the inn:

“We don’t want to drink your wine!”

Melchor and El Cascabelero, seated with their backs to the door, saw the tension in the faces of Zoilo and his two brothers-in-law, who were facing it. Martín, beside Melchor, was the only one in the group who turned his head.

“I didn’t think they were that fast,” the patriarch commented to Melchor.

Most of the clients, intrigued by the impending quarrel, moved away from the gypsies and made space for the newcomers. Only a very few left the inn. El Cascabelero and Melchor kept their eyes straight ahead.

“The sooner, the better,” Melchor said as he stifled a sigh of regret at not having gone home sooner. If he had, he would be with Caridad, safe. Or would he? Maybe not, who knew? He clicked his tongue. “What’s done is done,” he muttered to himself.

“What did you say?”

“They’re waiting for us,” answered El Galeote, standing up, his hand already on his knife.

El Cascabelero did the same, and all the others followed suit. There must have been eight Garcías, perhaps more: he couldn’t be sure when he saw them bunched up in the doorway.

“Idiots!” spat Melchor as soon as his gaze met the eyes of the man who seemed to be leading the party. “Wine paid for by a Vega will only be spilled on the García graves, where you’ll soon all be.”

“Manuel,” said El Cascabelero, surrounded by his men, “you are about to make the biggest mistake of your life.”

“Gypsy law—” the man tried to reply.

“Shut up!” interrupted Melchor. “Come for me, if you’ve got the balls.”

One of the onlookers cheered his bravado.

The click of several knives opening at the same time was heard inside the inn; the blades shone in the penumbra.

“Why …?” El Cascabelero started to ask Melchor.

“They don’t have enough room here,” he answered. “We will be more or less even. Outside they would crush us.”

He was right. Although the Garcías pushed aside tables and chairs in their path, their group couldn’t fully spread out in front of the Vegas. Six against six, seven at the most. The rest will come later, thought Melchor as he launched the first stab, which easily cut open the forearm of the García in front of him. The others continued feinting, not really jumping into the fight. Then he realized something else, even more important: they didn’t know how to fight. Those gypsies hadn’t ranged through mountains and fields; they lived in Madrid, comfortably, and their fights weren’t with smugglers and criminals who fought viciously, with no concern even for their lives. He stabbed again, his arm extended, and the wounded García backed up into the relative behind him.

Right then, a cold sweat drenched Melchor’s back. Martín! He was still beside him, as always, and while the others still hadn’t joined the fray, he could see how the young man was launching himself, wildly, blindly, on one of the Garcías. He wasn’t experienced with a knife … He heard a terrified howl from the mouth of El Cascabelero when his adversary’s blow hit his youngest son’s wrist, disarming him.

“Stop!” shouted Melchor just as the García was about to go for the boy’s neck.

The knife stopped in midair. The entire world seemed to stop for Melchor. He dropped his weapon and sketched a sad smile toward the frightened face of the young Vega.

“Here you have me, swine.” He then gave himself up, opening his arms.

He didn’t look at Martín, he didn’t want to humiliate him, but he knew that El Cascabelero had his eyes downcast, looking at the floor or perhaps his own knife. Melchor approached the Garcías, and before they pounced on him, he had the chance to run a hand through Martín’s hair.

“The Vega blood has to continue to flow in you, not in old men like me,” he declared before they took him out of the inn amid insults, kicks and shoves.

SHE DIDN’T dare to clear her throat, for fear of being discovered, although the stench of death had a firm grip on her dry throat. The spring night had fallen and she was thirsty, very thirsty. Yet that urgency disappeared as soon as a soft breeze began to caress her body and lift her fine hairs; then she trembled, convinced she was being surrounded by the ghosts emerging from the many tombs of that cemetery. And while the men behind the tombstone that protected Caridad made their bets and stakes in whispers that seemed to her like howls, she shivered again and again from the contact with the living dead.

They had entered the cemetery just as she was about to leave it to search for a fountain to quench her thirst. Five, six, seven men—she wasn’t able to count them—who were allowed in by the sacristan himself. Throughout the course of the night, she heard some of them leave the cemetery, probably having lost all their money, and other new ones joining the game. A simple lantern hung on a memorial cross lit up the gravestone where they had been playing cards for a couple of hours already. The sacristan acted as the lookout for the street patrol. On a couple of occasions he warned them of approaching constables and, in the sudden deepest darkness, Caridad held her breath, just as they all did, until the danger passed and they started up their illegal game again.

It was on those two occasions, when the faint light of the lantern was extinguished in haste and fear, that Caridad felt the presence of the spirits most strongly. She prayed. She prayed to Oshún and to Our Lady of Charity, because the dead not only rested in their graves, but they also mingled with the earth on which she sat, the same earth that she had played with to pass the time, on which she had dropped the rest of the loaf of bread that she distractedly wiped off before continuing to gnaw on it. She had heard it from the mouth of the furtive card players:

“This smell is unbearable,” one of them whispered.

“That’s exactly why we are here,” was the response. “This is the worst one in Madrid. Few people come anywhere near.”

“But …” the first tried to insist.

“You can go to another cemetery if you’d like,” replied a different voice calmly. “This one at San Sebastián is the best for getting around the gambling laws. They’ve run out of room to bury the dead and every spring they dig them up; the last time was just a few days ago. They take out the corpses that have been buried for two years and move them to the mass grave; a lot of the remains get mixed up with the dirt and nobody worries about it. That’s why it smells like this: like death, for fuck’s sake! Are you playing or not?”

And Caridad couldn’t do anything to free herself from all the dead that surrounded her, the stench that scratched at her throat, filling her with bad omens. Melchor! What had happened to him? Why had he left her at the hostel? Something serious must have happened to him, or …? Was he capable of …? No. Surely not. The last kiss he gave her before leaving and the happy times in Barrancos flooded her mind and banished thoughts of that possibility. And meanwhile, just as she had done in Triana, silently, with her dark hand on the stone he had given her, she tried to concentrate and summon her gods: Eleggua, come to me, tell me if Melchor is still alive, if he is well. But all her efforts were in vain and she felt that the ghosts were fondling her … All of a sudden she leapt up. She jumped up off the ground as if a large crossbow had launched her toward the heavens. She feared that the dead were coming for her. She scrubbed her hair, her face, her neck … hard. A sticky, warm liquid was soaking her head.

“Holy Mother of God!” echoed through the cemetery. “What is this?”

The exclamation came from the man who had climbed on the grave whose stone Caridad was hiding behind. He didn’t dare to move, shocked, terrified, unable to make out in the darkness what that frenetically shaking black spot was. The stream of urine that had managed to do what the ghosts had been unable to—make Caridad reveal her hiding place—gradually grew thinner until it was a tiny thread.

Caridad was as slow to react as the man was to adapt his vision to the darkness. When they both had, they found themselves face to face: she smelling her arm once she realized what had happened; he with his now shrunken penis still in his hand.

“It’s a Negro woman!” said one of the players who had come over to see what the fuss was all about.

“Black as night,” added another.

A smile appeared on Caridad’s face, revealing her white teeth in the darkness. Despite her disgust, they were humans, not ghosts.

Standing there in front of the men, the oil lamp one of them held illuminating her, she heard their comments:

“And what was she doing hiding there?”

“Now I understand why my luck was so bad.”

“She’s got some great tits on her.”

“That’s not bad luck. You don’t even know how to hold the cards in your hand.”

“Speaking of hands, are you going to hold your knob all night long?”

“What do we going to do with the darkie?”

“We?”

“She has to go and wash. She’s drenched in piss!”

“Negroes don’t mind that.”

“Gentlemen, the cards are waiting.”

A murmur of approval rose among the men and, without paying any more attention to Caridad’s presence, they turned their backs on her to gather again around the grave over which they were playing.

“A bit further down, along Atocha Street, in the Antón Martín Plaza, you’ll find a fountain. You can wash there,” said the man who’d urinated on her, hiding his member in his trousers.

Caridad turned her head at the mention of the fountain: her tremendous thirst was unrelenting and the dryness in her throat reasserted itself, along with the urgent need to wash herself. The card player was about to go with his companions when Caridad interrupted him.

“Where?” she asked.

“In the plaza …” he started to repeat before realizing that Caridad didn’t know Madrid. “Listen: you go out of the cemetery and turn the corner toward the left …” She nodded. “Good. It’s the narrow street behind here.” He pointed to the wall of niches that enclosed the cemetery. “Del Viento. Keep walking and go around the church, always toward the left, and you will reach a larger street. That’s Atocha. Go down it and you’ll find the fountain. You can’t miss it. It’s very close by.”

The man didn’t wait for a reply and turned his back on her as well. But: “Oh!” he exclaimed, turning his head. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were hiding there.”

Caridad’s thirst pushed her on.

“Goodbye, Negress,” she heard the players say as she slipped briskly away from the cemetery, beneath the surprised gaze of the sacristan who was watching over it.

“Clean yourself off well.”

“Don’t tell anyone you saw us.”

“Good luck!”

Turn left twice, Caridad repeated to herself as she went around the bell tower and church of San Sebastián. And now go down the large street. She passed a new side street and she could make out the small square in the light of the street lamps from two buildings. In its center she saw the fountain: a tall monument crowned by an angel, statues of children below and water spouting from the mouth of large fish.

Caridad was only thinking about washing herself and quenching her thirst. She didn’t notice a couple of stealthy figures hiding from the gleam of the building’s torches. But they didn’t take their eyes off her when she climbed into the fountain’s basin to bring her lips to the pipe that came out of the mouth of one of the dolphins. She drank and drank, while the two men approached her. Then, with her legs and the lower part of her slave shirt already wet, she got on her knees, stuck her head beneath the stream and let the fresh water run over the back of her neck and her hair, down her shoulders and her breasts, feeling herself purified, freed from the filth and all the spirits that had been pestering her in the cemetery. Oshún! The river Orisha, who rules over the waters; she had paid tribute to her many times in Cuba, there on the tobacco plantation. She stood, looked up at the heavens above the angel that topped the fountain.

“Where are you now, my goddess?” she prayed out loud. “Why don’t you come to me? Why don’t you mount me?”

“If she doesn’t, I’d be happy to mount you.”

Caridad turned in surprise. The two men, standing by the basin, opened their eyes widely, full of lust at the sight of the body beneath the drenched grayish shirt that stuck to her voluptuous breasts, stomach and wide hips.

“I can give you dry clothes,” offered the other.

“But first you’ll have to take those off,” laughed the first in a brazen tone.

Caridad closed her eyes, desperate. She was fleeing from a cutter who wanted to force himself on her and now …

“Come here,” they encouraged her.

“Come closer.”

She didn’t move. “Leave me alone.”

Her request was somewhere between a plea and a warning. She scrutinized the space beyond the two men: deserted, dark.

The men looked at each other and nodded with a smile, as if planning a crude game.

“Don’t be afraid,” one said.

The other waved his hand, calling her to come closer. “Come with me, little Negress.”

Caridad backed away toward the middle of the fountain until her shoulders hit the statue.

“Don’t be silly, you’ll have fun with us.”

One of them jumped over the basin.

Caridad looked both ways: she couldn’t escape; she was trapped between two of the large dolphins that emerged from the water.

“Where would you go?” asked the other man, realizing what she intended to do, while he also leapt over the basin, on the opposite side, trapping her. “I’m sure you don’t have anywhere to go.”

Caridad shrank back even more against the monument and felt the stone scratching her back just before they both pounced on her. She tried to defend herself with kicks and punches, the costume jewel from Melchor imprisoned in her fist. She couldn’t. She screamed. They grabbed her and she felt disgusted listening to them laugh heartily, as if forcing themselves on her wasn’t enough and they had to humiliate her even more by mocking her. They groped her and tugged at her shirt, fighting to remove her clothes: one tried to rip the shirt, the other to pull it over her head. She felt them sink their fingernails into her inner thigh and squeeze her breasts as they continued laughing and spewing obscenities …

“Halt! Who goes there?”

Suddenly she sensed she was alone although the shirt over her face didn’t allow her to see. Violent splashing told her that the men were running off. When she pulled the shirt down from over her eyes, she found herself before two men dressed in black, illuminated by the oil lamp one of them carried. The other held a truncheon. Both wore rigid cardboard collars that had once been white at their necks.

“Cover yourself,” ordered the one with the oil lamp. “Who are you?” he inquired as she struggled to cover her bare breasts. “What were you doing with those men?”

Caridad lowered her gaze toward the water. The white man’s authoritarian tone caused her to react as she had on the tobacco plantation. She didn’t answer.

“Where do you live? What is your occupation?”

“Come with us,” decided the other, his voice weary with the fruitless questioning, as he tapped his truncheon on the edge of the basin.

They set off walking down Atocha Street.