The Barefoot Queen Read Free Page A

pile of luggage on board. The boat was a sleek single-masted tartan that had arrived in Cádiz with a shipload of valuable oil from the fertile Sevillian lowlands.
    From the Bay of Cádiz they coasted to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, to the mouth of the Guadalquivir. They waited off the coast of Chipiona, along with other tartans and the local
charangueros
that plied between ports, for the high tide and favorable winds they needed to cross the dangerous Sanlúcar sandbar, those fearsome shoals that had turned the area into a boat graveyard. The captains would only brave crossing that treacherous bar when every one of several specific conditions came together. Then they would sail upriver, taking advantage of the tide’s momentum, which could be felt up to the outskirts of Seville.
    “Ships have sometimes had to wait up to a hundred days to cross the bar,” said a sailor to one elegantly dressed passenger, who immediately shifted his worried gaze toward Sanlúcar and its spectacular marshlands, obviously desperate not to suffer the same fate.
    Caridad, seated among some bags against the gunwale, let herself sway with the tartan’s rocking. The sea, though calm, seemed somehow tense, just as the ship’s passengers did, and that same atmosphere prevailed in the other delayed boats. It wasn’t only the wait; it was also the fear of an attack from the British or from pirates. The sun began to set, tinting the water an ominous metallic tone, and the uneasy conversations of the crew and passengers dropped to whispers. The winter revealed its harshness as the sun hid and the dampness seeped into Caridad’s bones, making her feel even colder. She was hungry and tired. She wore her jacket, as gray and faded as her dress and both of rough cloth, in sharp contrast to the other passengers who wore what seemed to her lavish clothes, in bright colors. She realized her teeth were chattering and she had gooseflesh, so she searched in her bundle for the blanket. Her fingers brushed a cigar and she touched it delicately, recalling its aroma, its effects. She needed it, anxious to dull her senses, forget her tiredness, her hunger … and even her freedom.
    She wrapped herself up in the blanket. Free? Don Damián had put her on that boat, the first he’d found about to depart the Cádiz port.
    “Go to Seville,” he said after negotiating a price with the captain and paying him out of his own pocket. “To Triana. Once you’re there, look for the Minims’ convent and tell them I sent you.”
    Caridad wished she’d had the courage to ask him what Triana was or how she would find that convent, but he practically pushed her aboard.He was nervous, looking from side to side, as if afraid someone would see them together.
    She smelled the cigar and its fragrance transported her to Cuba. All she knew was where her shack was, and the plantation, and the sugar mill she went to every Sunday with the other slaves to hear mass and then sing and dance until they wore themselves out. From the shack to the plantation and from the plantation to the shack, day in day out, month in month out, year in year out. How was she going to find the convent? She curled up against the gunwale and pressed her back up to the wood, searching for contact with a reality that had vanished. Who were those strangers? And Marcelo? What had happened to him? And what about her friend María, the mulatta she sang choruses with? And the others? What was she doing in a strange boat at night, in a far-off land, on her way to a city she wasn’t even sure existed? Triana? She had never dared to ask the whites anything. She always knew what she had to do! She didn’t need to ask.
    Her eyes grew damp as she remembered Marcelo. She felt around in her bundle for the flint, steel and tinder to start a flame. Would they let her smoke? On the tobacco farm she could; it was common there. She had cried over Marcelo during the voyage. She had even.… She had even been tempted to throw