That’s why we’re on this pilgrimage to the sanctuary, to give thanks,“ Diego babbled, inventing on the fly. ”Is it catching?“ the host wanted to know. ”Not from a distance, only by contact,“ Diego explained. ”You don’t want to touch them.“ The men did not seem convinced; they could see the girls’ healthy hands and young bodies, which the robes could not conceal. Furthermore, they suspected that these pilgrims carried more money than was usual, and they also had their eyes on the horses. One of them was a little lame, but they were good stock; they would be worth something. Finally they left, taking their lantern and leaving the group in darkness. ”We have to get out of here. Those men are terrifying,“ Isabel whispered. ”We can’t travel at night, and we have to rest. I’ll keep watch,“ Diego replied softly. ”Then,“ Isabel proposed, ”I will sleep a couple of hours and take your place.“ They still had the raw eggs; Nuria poked a hole in four for them to suck, and kept the other two. ”Too bad I have no idea how to milk a cow, otherwise we would have some milk,“ the chaperone sighed. Then she asked Diego to leave for a few minutes so the girls could rinse off with a wet cloth. Finally they lay down on the straw, covered by their blankets, and slept. Three or four hours went by while Diego sat and nodded with his daggers within reach, dead tired, struggling to keep his eyes open. Suddenly he was jarred awake by the barking of a dog and realized that he had dozed off. For how long? He had no idea, but any sleep was a forbidden pleasure under the circumstances. To clear his head he went outside, taking deep breaths of the icy night air. Smoke was still coming from the chimney of the house, and light was shining through the one window in the solid stone wall; that indicated that he had not been asleep as long as he had feared. While he was outside, he walked a little farther away from the shed to relieve himself. As he returned a few moments later, he saw two silhouettes moving toward the stable with suspicious stealth: their villainous hosts. They had something in their hands, perhaps guns or clubs. He knew that his daggers, which were good only in close combat, would be next to useless against those armed brutes. He uncoiled the whip at his waist and immediately felt the cold at the nape of his neck that always preceded a fight. He knew that Isabel had her pistol, but he had left her sleeping, and to add to that, the girl had never fired a weapon. He was counting on the advantage of surprise, but he could do nothing in that dark. Praying not to be betrayed by the dogs, he trailed the men to the stable. For a few minutes there was absolute quiet, as the evildoers checked to be sure that their unwary guests were sound asleep. Once satisfied, they lighted an oil lamp in order to locate the figures on the straw. They were not aware that one of the group was missing, confusing Diego’s mantle for another body. One of the horses neighed and woke Isabel. For a few seconds she could not remember where she was; then she saw the men, understood the situation, and groped for the pistol that she had left beneath her cover. She did not reach it; a couple of roars from the attackers, who were waving thick sticks, froze her in mid-action. By then, Juliana and Nuria were awake. ”What do you want!“ Juliana cried. ”You, you whores, and your money!“ one of them replied, moving toward her with upraised bludgeon. And then in the wavering light of the flame, the blackguards saw the faces of their victims. With a bellow of absolute terror they jumped back, turned to run, and found themselves facing Diego, whose arm was already upraised. Before they could recover, the whip fell with a crack upon the closer of the two, who cried out in pain and dropped his truncheon. The other man lunged toward Diego, who danced aside and kicked him in the stomach, doubling him over. But now the first had recovered from his shock and had leaped toward Diego with an agility unexpected in someone so heavy, falling on top of him like a sack of rocks. The whip was now useless, and the peasant had grabbed Diego by the wrist that held the dagger. He had him pressed flat to the ground, and was reaching for his throat with one hand as with the other he tried to shake loose the dagger. He had a strong grip and exceptional strength. His foul breath and saliva nauseated Diego, who fought back desperately, not understanding how this beast had managed in an instant to do what the expert, Julius Caesar, had not been able to do in La Justicia’s test of courage. Out of the corner of his eye, Diego could see that the other man had struggled to his feet and was reaching for his stick. There was more light now because the oil lamp had rolled across the ground, setting fire to some straw. At that instant a shot sounded, and the man who was on his feet dropped to the ground, roaring like a lion. That distracted the man atop Diego sufficiently that he was able to push him off with a ferocious knee to the groin. The recoil of the gun knocked Isabel off her feet. She had fired almost blindly, holding the weapon with both hands, and by pure luck she had shattered the attacker’s knee. She could not believe it. The idea that the twitch of a finger on a trigger would have such consequences had never entered her head. A sharp command from Diego, who had her victim’s partner immobilized with his whip, roused her from her trance. ”Quick! The stable is on fire! We have to get the animals out!“ The three women sprang up to save the cow and horses, which were bawling and whinnying with terror, while Diego pulled the two miscreants outside, one of whom was still bellowing with pain, his leg crushed to a pulp and slick with blood. The stable went up like an enormous bonfire, lighting the night. Now Diego could see Juliana and Isabel’s faces, which had so frightened their assailants. He, too, yelled with disgust. Their skin, yellow and lumpy like the hide of a crocodile, oozed pus in some places and in others had dried like a scab, tugging at their features. Their eyes were distorted, their lips had disappeared the two girls were monsters. ”What happened to you!“ Diego cried. ”Yellow fever.“ Isabel laughed. It had been Nuria’s idea. The chaperone had suspected that their depraved hosts would return to attack during the night. She knew how evil those men were from the story of the peasant woman whose husband had been killed. She remembered an old egg-based beauty formula that her ancestors had learned from Muslim women, and she had used the two yolks left from supper to paint the girls’ faces. As the eggs dried, they turned into cracked, stinking masks. ”It comes off with water, and it does a lot for the skin,“ Nuria explained, very proud of herself. They bandaged the wound of the bully with the scar who yelled and screamed as if he were being tortured to at least prevent his bleeding to death, though there was little hope the leg could be saved. They left his friend tied to a chair, but did not gag him, so he could call for help. The house was close to the road, and more than one passerby would hear. ”An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; you pay for everything in this life, or in hell,“ were Nuria’s words of farewell. They took a ham they found hanging from a beam in the house and the two ponderous, heavy-hoofed Percherons. They were not good as mounts, but they would always be better than walking; besides, they did not want to leave the pair of bandits a means of pursuit. The incident with the noseless man and his cohort with the scar served to make the travelers more cautious. From that night on they had decided they would take shelter only in sites designated by pilgrims from time immemorial. After several weeks of following the northern route, all four had lost weight, and were tougher in body and soul. The sun burned their skin, the dry air and freezing weather cracked it. Nuria’s face became a map of fine wrinkles, and she was suddenly old. That once stiff-backed, apparently ageless woman now dragged her feet and was slightly bowed, but far from making her ugly, it made her beautiful. Her grim expression relaxed, and a teasing, grandmotherly humor blossomed forth, something they had never seen before. She also looked better in the simple pilgrim’s robe than she had in the severe black uniform and cap she had worn all her life. Juliana’s curves disappeared; she looked smaller and younger with her enormous eyes and red, chapped cheeks. She rubbed her skin with lanolin as protection against the sun, but she could not escape the onslaught of the weather. Isabel, strong and slender, was the one who suffered least from the journey. Her features sharpened, and she acquired a long, sure stride that made her appear boyish. She had never been happier; she was born for freedom. ”Curses! Why wasn’t I
born a man?“ she exclaimed on one occasion. Nuria gave her a good hard pinch, with the warning that such blasphemy could lead straight to the cauldrons of hell, but then she laughed heartily. Had Isabel been born a male, she commented, she would have been another Napoleon, given the battles she was always waging. They all adapted to the routine imposed by the march. Diego assumed command quite naturally; he made the decisions and dealt with strangers. He tried to arrange a bit of privacy for the women’s most personal needs, but they were never out of his sight for more than a few minutes. They drank and washed in rivers; that was why they had brought the gourds, the symbol of a pilgrim. With each league they traveled, they forgot past comforts: a piece of bread tasted like heaven, a sip of wine was a blessing. In one monastery they were given cups of thick, sweet chocolate, which they savored slowly, sitting on a bench outdoors. For several days that was all they could think of; they could not remember a more perfect pleasure than that warm, fragrant drink beneath the stars. During the day they survived on the leftovers of food they were given where they lodged: bread, hard cheese, an onion, a slice of sausage. Diego still had some money for emergencies, but they tried not to use it; pilgrims lived off charity. If they had no choice but to pay for something, he bargained a long time, until what they needed was nearly a gift; that way he avoided raising suspicions. They had traveled across half of the Basque country when winter set in without mercy. Sudden wintry blasts penetrated to the bone, and chill winds kept them shivering beneath wet mantles. The horses, also affected by the cold, seemed phlegmatic. Nights were longer, the fog denser, their progress slower, the frost heavier, and the journey more difficult, but the landscape was breathtakingly beautiful. Green and more green, hills of green velvet, enormous forests in every shade of green, rivers and waterfalls of crystalline, emerald green water. For great distances the track would disappear in the moist soil, only to reappear later as a faint path through the trees or the worn cobblestones of an ancient Roman road. Nuria convinced Diego that it was a good economy to spend money on liquor, the only thing that warmed them at night and made them forget the torment of the day. At times they had to stay two days in a shelter because of the pitiless rain and their need to collect their strength. They used that time to listen to the stories of the other travelers and the monks and nuns who had seen so many sinners on the road to Santiago de Compostela. One day in the middle of December, when they were still a long way from the next village and had not seen a house for a long time, they saw flickering lights through the trees, something like dying bonfires. They approached with caution, thinking it might be army deserters, who were more dangerous than any felon. They tended to travel in groups, ragged and filthy, armed to the teeth and ready for anything. In the best of cases, those war-hardened men hired themselves out as mercenaries and fought for money, to settle arguments, to deliver revenge, and other livelihoods that might be dishonorable but were preferable to life as bandits. Their only skill lay in their swords, and manual labor was unthinkable to them. In Spain only peasants worked; on their backs they bore the enormous weight of the empire, from the king down to the last bailiff, pettifogger, priest, gambler, page, streetwalker, or beggar. Diego left the women behind some shrubs, armed with the pistol, which Isabel had learned to use, to scout out those distant signs of life. At closer range he confirmed that, as he had thought, the light came from several campfires. He did not, nevertheless, think it was a gang of outlaws or deserters because he could hear the soft melody of a guitar. His heart leaped when he recognized the music, a passionate lament that Amalia used to dance to with whirling skirts and clicking castanets while the rest of her tribe kept time with tambourines and clapping hands. It was not unique; all Gypsies played similar songs. He slowly rode on until he reached the clearing with several tents and fires. ”God help me,“ he muttered, ready to shout with relief. These were his friends. No doubt about it, it was the family of Amalia and Pelayo. Several men of the tribe came out to see who the intruder was, and in the gray light of evening they saw an unkempt and unshaven monk coming toward them on a large plow horse. They did not recognize him until he jumped to the ground and ran toward them the last person they expected to see again was Diego de la Vega, and certainly never in a pilgrim’s robe. ”What the devil has happened to you!“ exclaimed Pelayo, clapping him affectionately on the back, and Diego couldn’t tell whether it was tears running down his cheeks, or drops of rain. The Gypsy went back with him to look for Nuria and the girls. Once they were all seated around the fire, the travelers, in broad strokes, painted a picture of their recent adventures, from the execution of Tomas de Romeu to their encounter with Rafael Moncada, omitting the minor twists and turns that added nothing to the story. ”As you see, we are fugitives, not pilgrims. We have to reach La Corufia to see if we can sail from there to America, but we have traveled only halfway, and winter is nipping at our heels. May we travel on with you?“ Diego asked. The Romany had never received a plea of that sort from a gadje. By tradition they distrusted non-Gypsies, especially when they showed good intentions most likely they had a viper up their sleeves but they had had good opportunity to know Diego well, and they respected him. They walked off to consult among themselves, then left the group of gadjes drying their clothes beside the fire while they went to one of the tents. Stitched together from several cloths, ragged and filled with holes, it nevertheless offered shelter against the caprices of the weather. The meeting of the tribe, called a kris, lasted a good part of the night. It was presided over by Rodolfo, the from baro, the eldest of the men, the patriarch, counselor, and judge, who knew the laws of the Roma. Those laws had never been written or codified; they were passed down from generation to generation in the memory of the from baros who interpreted them according to variables in time and place. Only males could participate in decisions, but enforcement of that custom had relaxed during those years of misery, and the women did not stay silent, especially Amalia, who reminded everyone that Diego had saved their necks in Barcelona, and then had given them a pouch of money that allowed them to escape and survive. Even so, some members of the clan voted against Diego’s request; they believed that the prohibition against fraternizing with gadjes was stronger than any amount of gratitude. Only commercial dealings were allowed; anything else led to ma rime or bad luck. Finally they reached an agreement, and Rodolfo cut off discussion with an irrevocable verdict. They had seen much betrayal and evil in their lives, he said, and they should appreciate it when someone held out a hand to them. Let no one say that the Roma were ungrateful. Pelayo left to take the decision to Diego. He found him asleep on the ground beside the women, all of them huddled together because by then the fire had gone out. They looked like a pitiful litter of pups. ”The assembly voted for you to travel with us to the sea,“ he notified them. ”That is, as long as you live like the Roma and do not violate any of our taboos.“ The Gypsies were poorer than ever. They did not have their wagons, which French soldiers had destroyed the year before in the circus fire, and their tents had been replaced by others even more ragged, but they did have horses, as well as forges, pots and pans, and a couple of carts for transporting their belongings. They had suffered want, but they were all together; not even a child had been lost. The only one who was looking bad was Rodolfo, who once had been able to lift a horse and now had symptoms of tuberculosis. Amalia had not changed at all, but Petrina had turned into a fine adolescent who no longer fit into the olive jar, however much she squeezed. She was promised to a distant cousin from another tribe, a youth she had never seen. The wedding would take place in summer, after the family of the groom paid the darro, money to compensate Petrina’s tribe for her loss. Juliana, Isabel, and Nuria were installed in the women’s tent. At first the chaperone was terrified, convinced that the Gypsies would kidnap the de Romeu girls and sell them as concubines to the Moors in North Africa. A whole week went by before she let the girls out of her sight, and still another before she spoke to Amalia, who was in charge of teaching them their Roma customs to p
revent offensive breaches of etiquette. She provided them with full skirts, peasant blouses, and fringed scarves from the women’s shared wardrobe, all old and dirty but brightly colored, and in any case more comfortable, and warmer, than the pilgrim’s robes. The Roma believed that women are impure from waist to feet, so that showing any leg was a grave offense; they had to wash downstream, far from the men, especially during days they were menstruating. They were held to be inferior to males, to whom they owed submission. Isabel’s furious arguments had no effect; she, too, had to walk behind the men, never ahead, and she could not touch them because that would contaminate them. Amalia explained that they were always surrounded with spirits, whom they had to pacify with spells. Death was an unnatural event that infuriated the victim, which was why you had to watch out for the vengeance of the dead. Rodolfo clearly seemed to be ill, and that had the clan very worried, especially because recently he had heard the cry of several owls, an augury of death. They had sent messages to distant family members so they could come and say good-bye with the proper respect before he left for the world of spirits. If Rodolfo left unwillingly or with anger, he could be turned into a mulo. Just in case, they had made preparations for the funeral ceremony, even though Rodolfo himself mocked them, convinced that he would live several years more. Amalia taught the women to read the future in palms, in tea leaves, and in crystal balls, but none of the three gadjes showed any signs of being a true drabardi. On the other hand, they did learn the use of certain medicinal herbs, and how to cook Roma style. Nuria added to the tribe’s basic recipes vegetable stew, rabbit, venison, wild boar, porcupine her knowledge of Catalan food, with excellent results. The Roma decried cruelty to animals, killing only what they needed. There were a few dogs in the camp but no cats, for they too were thought to be impure. In the meantime, Diego had to resign himself to observing Juliana from afar; it was considered very bad manners to approach women without a specific purpose. He used the time he had formerly spent contemplating his beloved in learning to ride like a true Roma. He had grown up galloping across the vast plains of Alta California, and he was proud of his horsemanship until he saw the acrobatics of Pelayo and other men of the clan. By comparison, he was almost inept. No one in the world knew more about horses than these people. They not only raised them, they trained them and healed them if they were ill; like Bernardo, they were also able to communicate with them. No Gypsy used a whip; hitting an animal was considered the worst form of cowardice. Within a few weeks, Diego could slide down and touch the ground at a full gallop, bounce, flip in the air, and come down sitting backward in the saddle; he could jump from one horse to another, and also gallop standing on two, with nothing to hold on to but the reins. He tried to perform these feats in front of the women, or, more accurately, where Juliana could see him; that compensated a little for the frustration of being separated from her. Pelayo outfitted him in his clothes: knee-length trousers, high boots, full-sleeved blouse, leather jerkin, kerchief tied around his head which unfortunately revealed his ears and a musket slung over his shoulder. He looked so manly in his new sideburns, with his tanned skin and caramel eyes, that even Juliana admired him from afar. The tribe would camp for several days near a town, where the men offered their services in breaking horses or doing metalwork while the women read fortunes and sold their potions and curative herbs. Once that market was exhausted, they went on to the next town. At night they ate around the fire and then always told stories or had music and dance. When he wasn’t busy, Pelayo fired up the forge and worked on shaping a sword that he had promised to Diego, a very special weapon, better than any Toledo saber, he said; it was made from an alloy of metals, the secret of which was fifteen hundred years old and came from India. ”In olden times the weapons of heroes were tempered by plunging the blade, red hot from the forge, into the body of a prisoner of war,“ said Pelayo. ”I will be content if we temper mine in the river,“ Diego replied. ”It is the most precious gift I have ever received. I will call it Justine, because it will always serve just causes.“ Diego and his friends lived and traveled with the Roma until February. They had two brief encounters with the military, who lost no opportunity to exert authority and harass the Gypsies, but they did not pick up that there were non-Gypsies among the tribe. Diego deduced that no one was looking for them as far away as Barcelona, and decided that his idea of fleeing in the direction of the Atlantic had not been as absurd as it had at first seemed. They spent the worst part of the winter protected from the weather and the dangers of the road in the sheltering arms of the tribe, which took them in as they had never done before for gadjes. Diego did not have to defend the girls from the men because the thought of betrothal to any woman other than a Gypsy never entered their heads. They did not seem impressed with Juliana’s beauty, but they took notice when Isabel practiced fencing and strove to learn to ride like the men. During those weeks, our friends traveled across the remaining part of the Basque country and Galicia, and eventually found themselves at the gates of La Coruna. For sentimental reasons, Nuria asked to be allowed to go into Compostela to see the cathedral and kneel before the sanctuary. She had with time again become friends with the apostle, once she understood his twisted sense of humor. The entire tribe accompanied her. The city, with its narrow alleyways and passages, ancient houses, artisans’ shops, inns, taverns, plazas, and churches, spread out in concentric circles from the sepulcher, one of the spiritual hubs of Christianity. It was a bright day with a cloudless sky, invigoratingly cool. The cathedral, with its arches and slender spires, rose before them in all its millenary splendor, dazzling and proud. The Roma broke the calm hawking their trinkets, their various means of prognostication, and their potions to cure illness and revive the dead. In the meantime, Diego and his friends, like every traveler who reached Compostela, fell to their knees before the central portico of the basilica and placed their hands on the stone foundation. They had completed their pilgrimage; it was the end of a long road. They gave thanks to the apostle for having protected them, and asked him not to abandon them yet but help them cross the ocean safely. Before they had even finished, Diego noticed a man on his knees only a short distance away, praying with extravagant fervor. He knelt in profile, barely lighted by the many-colored reflections of the stained-glass windows, but even though it had been five years, Diego recognized him immediately. It was Galileo Tempesta. He waited until the sailor stopped beating his breast and crossing himself, and then went over to him. Tempesta turned, startled to see himself approached by a Gypsy with long sideburns and mustaches. ”It is I, Senor Tempesta, Diego de la Vega “