She could leave, follow the golden trail that the spring night’s full moon sent over the vegetable patch and the wheat fields that spread behind the house. The town was plunged in absolute silence, and that magical glow invited her to abandon the miserable little room beside the garden that they had let her stay in, and Caridad walked toward the moon with her gaze lost in the plains that extended before her. A shadow in the fields, sometimes still, awed by the immensity, other times walking aimlessly, as if hoping to find a path that led her … where?

Her reception months earlier into the new house had been mixed. Herminia’s aunt and uncle had stifled their surprise. Too black, their eyes shouted. Antón observed her with a hint of lust that Herminia was quick to intercept by placing herself between them; Caridad didn’t entirely understand that sudden reaction. The children’s misgivings soon turned into curiosity, and Rosario welcomed her with a disgusted expression.

“Is she healthy?” she spat at Herminia. “Are you sure she isn’t going to give Cristóbal some Negro disease?”

The wet nurse’s fear banished her to the garden, to a shed filled with farming implements, attached to the house, which reminded her of the one she had stayed in during the roundup, beside the house of the good Christians Fray Joaquín took her to for safekeeping. Instead of nets and fishing poles, this one had yokes and mattocks.

Cristóbal, the son of the prosecutor … how was she going to infect him with anything? The little boy looked more like a butterfly cocoon than like Rosario’s boy, who was the same age; his mother topped up his share of her milk with bread soaked in wine and left him to be passed freely from hand to hand, when he wasn’t on the ground. Each morning, after bathing Cristóbal in cold water and spreading flour between his legs, Rosario wrapped him in white linen from his feet to his shoulders, with his little arms stuck to each side to avoid deforming him with the tight fabric. That was how, like a little white cocoon from which only his head emerged, the boy spent his days, lying in the rustic wooden crib that Rosario only lifted him out of so he could latch on to one of her nipples. Once his hunger was sated, Cristóbal dozed, but most of his day was spent howling, unable to move, irritated by the urine and excrement trapped against his skin, which were cleaned up only grudgingly because swaddling him again was such a chore. Caridad felt sorry for Cristóbal. She compared him to the other kids who ran about the house, to the gypsy kids in Triana and even to the little mulattoes born in the shacks in Cuba; their mothers nursed them for two or three months and then they were left in the care of older slave women who were no longer useful in the fields. Always naked and free.

“All the wet nurses, even the ladies, swathe babies,” Herminia explained to her one day. “It’s always been done that way.”

“But … it’s not natural!”

Herminia shrugged her shoulders. “I know,” she agreed. “Nobody would think to wrap a lamb or a piglet to make it grow healthier and better. There are wet nurses who have even broken one of their arms, or legs, or ribs … Many children end up deformed or hunchbacked.”

“So why do they do it?” asked Caridad, horrified.

“Because that way they don’t have to watch them. And because they avoid accidents. If the wet nurse knows how to wrap, she will return the child alive to its parents. The deformities might show up, but always later on, over the years, and nobody will be able to say it was her fault. If they don’t swaddle, they risk having to tell the parents that their child fell or broke a bone, or swallowed something and choked, or split open his head, or …”

Caridad silenced her with a disgusted expression.

Little Cristóbal occupied her thoughts on some of those nights in the fields: she was nothing more than a slave who was now free because the “plague of the seas” had ended her master’s life, although it could well be said that the insatiable plague had come with the intention of causing her the suffering that frail Don José was unable to inflict upon her himself. And yet, she could look up at the seductive moon over the Castilian fields. And Cristóbal, the rich son of a high-ranking official, was a slave to his swaddling linen. Sometimes she felt tempted to steal the boy and let him run through the fields … would he even know how to move? She remembered little Marcelo: even as a slave with his sight and mind disabled, he had lived in greater freedom than that poor boy.

“Women of means don’t want to breastfeed their children, that’s why they hand them over to strangers,” explained Herminia. “They don’t want to lose their figure, that narrow waist they fight with their corsets to achieve, or for their breasts to harden to bursting with milk only to droop flaccid over time. They don’t want to be tied down and unable to attend social events, the comedies, the dances or the intellectual gatherings. But above all,” she added that Rosario had confessed this to her one day, “they are afraid of not knowing how to soothe their child’s crying and the possibility that their little ones could die in their hands …

“They prefer, if it has to happen, to just be shown the corpse!” Caridad remembered Herminia’s outburst, her green eyes sparkling with rage, perhaps lamenting some personal experience. Caridad hadn’t asked her about the fate of the child she’d told her about on their way there and even less who the father was, since for some time now she had been fairly certain it was her cousin Antón. It was a tacit agreement among all the members of that family: Rosario didn’t want to get pregnant again, since that would mean the prosecutor taking his son out of her care and losing money; meanwhile, Antón brazenly approached Herminia, who was uncomfortable in her friend’s presence and cheerful and obliging otherwise. Some nights Caridad hastened her steps toward the fields when she heard their frolicking. Then, in the moonlight, with the lovers’ whispering drumming in her ears, she missed Melchor and cried remembering the nights beneath the stars when the gypsy had made her feel like a woman for the first time in her life.

IN THE months that had passed since her arrival, she’d met Don Valerio, the parish priest of Torrejón. She also met Fermín, the old sacristan who could no longer take care of the tobacco crops. Don Valerio had scrutinized her, as everyone did, while she tried to dispel the sacristan’s misgivings. Fermín bombarded her with questions as if it pained him to leave his plants in the hands of a strange Negress.

“Sir,” Caridad eventually interrupted him with certain harshness, tired of all the questions. “I know how to grow and work with tobacco. I’ve done it all my life …”

“Watch your pride!” scolded Don Valerio.

Herminia was about to intervene, but Caridad beat her to it.

“It’s not pride,” she replied to the priest, sweetening her tone. “It’s called slavery. White men like your lordship stole me from Africa as a girl and forced me to learn to grow and work tobacco. Everything I once was got lost because of that plant: my family, my children … I had two; one is still there, I sense it,” she added squinting her eyes for a few seconds. “The other was sold very young to a sugar mill owned by the Church …”

“Your attitude is not that of a slave,” the clergyman scolded her again.

“No, Father. It is that of a prisoner who gave two years of her life to the King for letting those who call themselves good Christians treat her like a slave.”

“You’ve got a very free tongue,” persisted Don Valerio, raising his voice.

Herminia grabbed Caridad by the forearm, insisting that she stop, but it was the priest who overruled her that day.

“Let her go on,” he requested. “I want to hear her.”

However, Caridad couldn’t get past the sudden feeling brought on by that touch on her arm and her friend’s pleading look. Perhaps it was true, perhaps she did have a very free tongue … Much had changed after two years in La Galera, she knew it, but at that moment she decided to keep quiet.

“I’m sorry to have offended you,” she apologized.

“Something you’ll have to confess.”

She lowered her gaze.

That same afternoon Herminia accompanied her to the tobacco field. The vineyards Marcial cultivated were by where the Toroto Brook emptied into the Henares River and the flat landscape was broken by some little hills, olive trees and vines that replaced the extensive wheat fields in Alcalá de Henares, Torrejón’s neighboring town, which it had been separated from in the sixteenth century. A gully behind Marcial’s vineyards served as a refuge for the tobacco farm, keeping it hidden.

Caridad looked at it from above: messy, wild, poorly maintained. It was July when she arrived in Torrejón and Marcial, following instructions from the sacristan, was harvesting; the man didn’t even notice her presence. Caridad saw how he cut down the plants at the stem, with a machete, almost violently, like the slaves cut sugarcane. Then, with the leaves still on the stalk, he piled them up one on top of each other on the ground, in the sun.

“What do you think?” Herminia asked her.

“Back on the plantation we chose leaf by leaf, each day choosing the ones that were ready, perfectly ripe, until the plant was just a clean standing stalk.”

Marcial turned when he heard their voices and signaled for them to come down.

“Caridad says that in Cuba they harvested leaf by leaf,” announced Herminia as soon as she reached the man.

To both of the women’s surprise, the man nodded. “I’ve heard that, but everyone who knows anything about tobacco assures me that in Spain it’s always been done this way. The truth is, since all the farms are secret, nobody can prove it, although Don Valerio maintains that they follow this procedure in the monasteries and convents. He must know something about how the clergy do it.”

“What difference does it make—?” Herminia started to ask.

“The upper leaves get more sun than the lower ones,” Caridad answered before she could finish.

“That happens with all plants,” put in Marcial, adding with a smile, “they grow upward. The problem is that collecting leaf by leaf takes a lot of work … and knowledge.”

As if she wanted to demonstrate it, Caridad had gone off and was feeling and smelling the leaves of the plants that were still standing. She pulled off little bits and chewed them. Marcial and Herminia let her do it, spellbound by the transformation in her as she moved among the plants, enraptured and in her own world, touching one, cleaning another, speaking to them …

They decided not to change the harvesting system for the few plants that were left. “It’s not worth it,” confirmed Caridad. Marcial trusted her and let her choose some to obtain the seeds for the next year and, with the cart overflowing, they waited in the vineyards until it was night to transport the tobacco to the town. They shared bread, wine, cheese, garlic and onions and chatted and smoked, enjoying watching the immense sky above them fill with stars.

The tobacco drying room was none other than the attic of the church’s sacristy, which a sleepy Fermín let them into. In the light of the oil lamp carried by the sacristan, who remained outside the door to the attic, Caridad could make out a large pile of plants onto which they hastily added the ones they had brought. How could they expect to get good tobacco with such carelessness? She stood up inside the attic. She grabbed one of the plants and wanted to bring it close to the light to …

“What are you doing, morena?” inquired the sacristan, moving aside the oil lamp.

“I …”

“You can’t work here at night,” he interrupted, “it’s dangerous with candles or lamps. Don Valerio only allows it to be done with natural light.”

Caridad was tempted to reply that she didn’t think that one would be able to work any better in there with natural light, but she kept quiet and the next morning, early, she showed up at the sacristy. She argued with Fermín until Don Valerio came up to the attic to sort things out.

“Didn’t you say that you couldn’t take care of it anymore?” he reproached the sacristan. “Then it will be as she decides.”

And Fermín let Caridad decide what to do and do it, but he kept his eye on her, sitting on a box and criticizing her every movement under his breath.

“Do you know what, Fermín?” said Caridad as she cut the leaves off a plant. “When I got to Triana I met an old woman who you remind me a lot of: she thought everything was wrong.” The sacristan grumbled. “But she was a good person.” Caridad let a few minutes pass in silence. “Are you a good person?” she asked him after a little while, without looking at him.

That spring night, in the field, smelling of tobacco, Caridad was surprised to find herself thinking of Old María. Sometimes, in La Galera, she had come to her mind, fleetingly; now she believed she could feel her by her side and she could even hear her swearing break the silence.

“Why did you say that the old woman was a good person?” the sacristan asked her the next morning, as soon as he saw her at daybreak.

“Because I think you are as well,” she answered.

Fermín thought for a few seconds and held back a smile, before handing her the sticks that she had been wanting the day before. Unlike on the Cuban plantation, the attic was set up to hang the entire plant from some hooks stuck into the ceiling’s wooden beams. “In Cuba we string the leaves onto cujes,” she had told him, “which are long sticks, to dry them.” Caridad was hoping to choose the best leaves and cure them the way she knew how to, but she had nowhere to hang them.

“Good cujes,” she lied, weighing the coarse, long sticks that Fermín handed her. “Now we have to find a way to hang them.”

“I already know how.” The sacristan tried to add a wink to his statement, but his attempt was no more than the ungainly grimace of an awkward old man. Caridad looked at him tenderly and rewarded him with a smile.

With the help of a revived Fermín, who had been infected by her enthusiasm, Caridad chose the leaves one by one and hung them up, strung together in pairs on those knotty sticks. She hung them in silence, comparing them to the cujes used on the plantation, which were carefully chosen in the mangrove swamps and patiently worked so that they didn’t imbue even the scent of wood onto the leaves. But what was the point of trying to keep that crude tobacco from smelling of wood when the incense that Don Valerio used to try to cover up their activities slipped in through every crack of the roof that led to the attic? She organized the leaves by their aroma, texture and dampness. She controlled the temperature and the atmosphere of the place by opening and closing the small windows, permitting or impeding air from running through depending on the moment. She incessantly ventilated and moved the leaves and the whole plants that hung from the roof to dry them better. She kept careful watch for insects and parasites. She devoted herself eagerly to it all until the midrib of the leaves was completely dry. Then she chose them from the cujes to pile up and tie together into small piles so they could ferment; Fermín knew very little about that procedure. Caridad calculated the temperature and dampness of the atmosphere, the water that the plants had had access to in the field, and the size of the piles grew, and she moved the tobacco that had been in the middle to the top and put the new leaves in the center, constantly tying up and untying the piles, smelling them, touching them, chewing the leaves, changing their location, moving them closer or further from the air currents, splattering the leaves with betún: a preparation she had made by fermenting the plant stalks in water.

During that season, her life was limited to walking at dawn the few steps from the house of Herminia’s aunt and uncle to the church of San Juan. She went back for lunch, which she ate alone in the smelly, packed garden shed; Rosario didn’t want her around the house, and Herminia was falling more in love with her cousin Antón each day, so she paid little attention to her. Caridad would have liked to talk to her about that, but her reproaches vanished when she remembered that Herminia had got her out of La Galera. She owed her gratitude. So she was forced to respect her friend’s feelings and stopped seeking her out. As soon as she had finished the piece of bread and the bowl of chickpeas, haricot beans or broad beans, almost always without any meat, she went back to the church and when she left it again it was late at night and she blended in with the shadows.

Don Valerio spread the rumor that a personage of the court—“How can I reveal his name?” the priest retorted when pressured—had begged him to take care of that poor Negro wretch who had been unjustly sent to the women’s prison. So he had sought out the help of Marcial and got her a place to sleep, and Caridad’s official documents fit with his story. He forced her to clean the church to justify her presence there, while the always willing parishioners gossiped, wondering which courtier it was and what his relationship was to the Negress. There were speculations about Don Valerio as well: some believed the priest; many others doubted him; and those who knew about the tobacco simply understood. The fact was that gradually that black woman, peaceful and solitary, who walked around barefoot and calm, became a part of the landscape; soon even the children stopped following her around and pestering her, and Caridad went out alone to stroll along the paths and fields, swaying in the breeze as she thought of Melchor, and Milagros, and Marcelo.